Fi d rlfcC 1 u b
.H..1C1
THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
PRESENTED BY
PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND
MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID
H
1
I
The Log
of the
North Shore Club
Paddle and Portage on the Hundred
Trout Rivers of Lake Superior
Kirkland B. Alexander
With 40 Illustrations
G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York and London
Gbe "Knickerbocker press
1911
I V
COPYRIGHT, 1911
BY
KIRKLAND B. ALEXANDER
Tfbe Imfcfctrbocfter prew, «ew ftork
go
THE MEMORY OF HIM WHO
THROUGH ALL THE TRAILS OF LIFE WAS MY GUIDE
MY BROTHER
THIS LITTLE VOLUME IS DEDICATED
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION . ix
CHASING A CAMP SITE AND THE LURE OF A PER-
AMBULATING WATERFALL i
DISCOVERIES, DAY-DREAMS, AND MENDACITY AT
DUNCAN'S COVE 27
AT THE KNEE OF MICHAEL .... 50
EXPLORING THE HEADWATERS OF THE STEEL
RIVER AND BILLY ERASER'S ANECDOTES . 67
" No LANDING FOR BOATS " .... 88
IN THE TROUT DEMOCRACY AND REEFS OF
CHIPPEWA HARBOR 113
A BEATIFIC ERROR AND A SECRET MISSION . 138
WE ENCOUNTER "PROFANITY PORTAGE" AND
"His LORDSHIP ' ' PORTAGES THE POTATOES . 1 6 1
THE PERILS OF RUNNING WHITE WATER FIND
WILLIAM TEDDY'S TONGUE . . .182
THE TROUT OF CAT PORTAGE, THE FULFILMENT
OF ELEVEN MONTHS' DREAMING . . 204
[v]
nvifi-l
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
"WAGUSH TAKES us OUT TO THE TROUT REEFS"
Frontispiece
A RESPITE FROM THE CARES OF AUTHORSHIP . 10
A RIFT AND SOME SHELTER IN THE SHORE ROCKS 20
AT LAST — DUNCAN'S COVE .... 28
11 THEY 'RE RISING, RIGHT IN FRONT OF CAMP " 28
"A LIGHT BREEZE WAS RUFFLING THE LAKE WHEN
WE HAD BREAKFASTED " . . . .30
HE WAS LURKING AT THE RIVER-MOUTH . . 42
" THERE 's A RARE CAMPING-SPOT AT DUNCAN'S
COVE" 42
" THEN THE SAND BEACH BEGAN SWINGING OPEN
LIKE A GATE" 46
JOE CADOTTE, GUIDE AND WILDERNESS-BROTHER 50
WHEN SUPERIOR BEGINS TO SULK ... 50
POSING FOR THE LOG-KEEPER AT SQUAW HARBOR 60
" THE TRAGIC ISOLATION OF THAT LIGHTHOUSE ! " 76
"JiM TALKED LITTLE AT THE CAMP-FIRE THAT
NIGHT" 82
[vii]
Illustrations
PAGE
1 ' IT WAS THE CAMP-BOSS, OF COURSE, WHO DID IT " 84
A CONSULTATION — " WAGUSH II. " VIVISECTED . 86
" WAGUSH II. HAULED us ALONG 320 MILES OF
SUPERIOR'S SHORE-LINE " ... 90
NORTH-BOUND FOR THE LAND OF VACATION
DREAMS . 92
" NINETY-FOOT FALLS " 102
" FOR WE HAD FOUND THE PLACE OF MONSTER
TROUT" 102
His EXCELLENCY, THE GOVERNOR, THE CENTRAL
FIGURE, MUCH PREFERS THIS TO GOVERNING 104
" HE WAS A LITTLE BETTER THAN FIVE POUNDS " 1 10
GARGANTUA LIGHT Is MORE HOSPITABLE THAN
IT LOOKS 116
ABANDONED BY THE HONORABLE HUDSON'S BAY
COMPANY . . . . . .116
WHERE THE STEAMER DROPS YOU OVERBOARD
AMONG THE TROUT REEFS . . . .120
" WE MUST TRAVEL LIGHT " .... 126
THE NEW RACE IN THE LAP OF THE RACE THAT
is PASSING 134
WILLIAM TEDDY EMBARRASSED AND GEORGE
ANDRE RESIGNED 140
Illustrations
PAGE
TOMMIE NlSH-I-SHIN-I-WOG MANS THE FRYING
PAN 152
" THEN CAME 4 BEAUTY LAKE '" . . .174
41 SOMETHING IN THE WAY OF WILD WATERWAYS
WORTHWHILE" 174
SNUG CAMP ON HAWK LAKE . . . .176
" WE PUSHED OFF TO HUNT OUT THE MOUTH OF
HAWK-LAKE RIVER " . . . .180
THESE ROCKS ARE NAN-I-BOU-JOU AND FAMILY . 182
OF COURSE, WE LUNCHED HERE AT THE LOWER
END OF THE RAPIDS 182
A SETTING BECOMING TO MOST ANY CANOE . 186
To MAKE CAMP OR TO PUSH ON — TIME 6. 30 P.M. . 186
ACHIEVEMENTS AND INVIDIOUS COMPARISONS . 190
DIARY-WRITING — AND MANICURING — ON THE
PORTAGE 194
THE FIRESAND Is "A PRETTY AND COMPACT
RIVER" 198
INTRODUCTION
HOW little and inaccurately are Lake
Superior and its rocky shores and
massive wilderness known! Captains of the
lake freighters, skippers of schooners, hardy
fishermen in their rough camps, the Chippewa
Indians, generations of trappers, and a few,
a very few, gentlemen-fishermen by accident
or family tradition know that vast and
impressive land of primitive enchantment.
And that is about all. Along the South
Shore from Sault de Sainte Marie to Duluth,
far to the west, there are towns and cities,
magically growing and ceaselessly thriving.
There are many lumbering camps and even
clubs of gentlemen-fishermen whose luxurious
tastes may still defy the wilderness.
It is very different along the North Shore.
That is the Superior country. In that ex-
panse of rocky coast from Sault de Sainte
[xi]
Introduction
Marie about 150 miles northward to Michipo-
coten Harbor there are four fishing stations.
From Michipocoten Harbor to Nepigon,
roughly 220 miles, for the coast is indescrib-
ably irregular, there are but isolated lumber
camps; in some rude, hidden little harbor a
fishing station; three settlements of a general
store each; the few isolated lonely stations
of the Canadian Pacific Railroad. The
fisherman, the pulp-wood hunter, and the
prospector alone find profit and economic
possibilities in that North Superior country.
Unquestionably, it will never be otherwise.
Nature there offers absolutely nothing save
to him who comes to venerate her and her
alone. The portage trails and the snow-shoe
trails are still there and they are worn precisely
as they were worn two hundred years ago.
It is all rocky ridges, impenetrable thickets,
archipelagoes of islands. The moose and
wolf will undoubtedly ever roam those
forests of pine and spruce and balsam and
birch and the sacred silences will never be
Introduction
desecrated, save by the scream of the gull and
the eagle circling overhead. Upon the back
of the Pic River there are the great-grandsons
of that Indian tribe which was there when
the French plundered the Hudson's Bay
post in 1750. Michipocoten Island, which
the hardy Alexander Henry, Esq., boasted of
discovering in 1760, "peopled by snakes,"
brooded over by the Great Spirit, "The Island
of Yellow Sands," is still the occasional home
of the daring prospector, braving solitude
and privation in his mad hunt for gold and
copper.
It has changed not at all. It will change
not at all. And the American people know
the vast country and inland sea so vaguely!
Somewhere back in lakes, deep buried in the
unknown wild, one hundred rivers take their
source and flow down through rocky gorges,
plunge over falls, and roll at last into Lake
Superior. Men, coming in tugs and yachts,
have named those rivers and fish for the
trout where waters of river and great lake
[xiii]
Introduction
mingle. Not a tenth of them have been
explored above their first falls. Beyond
those falls there are virgin fishing and terra
incognita; lakes of muscallonge; deep, dark
pools whose tenants have yet to distinguish
between the fly that is succulent and di-
gestible and the fly that is false and flung
by death. There nature is undisturbed and
man comes only, if at all, once in a decade
or a half-century. The trout and salmon
rivers of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick
and Labrador are better known than Lake
Superior, even with its Agewa River and Steel
River and Nepigon River, where are the
largest, gamiest, mightiest trout in the
world.
So, many years now the summer has led
us there. From Sault de Sainte Marie, at
the extreme southeastern corner of the great
lake, where wilderness shrinkingly touches
civilization, around that coast northward
and then westward to the Hudson's Bay
post at Nepigon, we have coasted in Macki-
[xivj
Introduction
naw boat, in canoe, and, very lately indeed
and reluctantly, in gasoline cruiser. That
is about 370 miles of Superior shore-line and
each mile of it has multiplied itself amazingly
in priceless and ineffaceable memories.
Each succeeding year the personnel of
the party changed. That was inevitable.
Business exigencies in the days of incom-
parable dreaming and preparation often
reared their Medusa-heads. To many en-
chanted places we have not returned since
death came among us and we never shall,
for the memories of those places illumined
with a single personality and a presiding
spirit are much too exquisite.
The purpose of these little chronicles —
and they have been taken from the author's
diary kept throughout these years — is to
present to those who know not Superior, and
those who yet happily may come to know
her, the trivial events of camp-life, trivial
truly, yet so full of color and vitality
and vast meaning to those who know the
[xv]
Introduction
intimacies of the rushing stream and camp-
fire, gleaming in the northern twilight beside
an unknown lake. Some of us, a very few,
have gone through these little adventures
and scenes for these successive years. It is
not easy to compile incidents so that they
be of interest to the impartial observer, least
of all to the unlover of the wilderness. To
give them sequence and cohesion one is
tempted to fictionize. To give them accuracy
and unity one is oppressed with their trivial-
ity. The logical compromise has seemed
attainable only in humanizing them and
imbuing them with the spirit of the North-
land and a note of the song that then sang
in our hearts. If only these little chronicles
awaken one thought of the North and sound
one wild, free note of the wilderness that
beguiled us, the test will indeed have been
met. It has been purposed for the little
scenes and incidents between these covers
that they be only simple, veracious, and of
passing interest, all three of which qualities
[xvij
Introduction
are, after all, but the prime essentials of
the gentleman-fisherman who hears the laugh
of the waterfall in his office and whose
memory stubbornly reverts to darting shad-
ows in a deep, dark pool.
[xviij
The Log of the North
Shore Club
CHAPTER I
CHASING A CAMP SITE AND THE LURE OF A
PERAMBULATING WATERFALL
THE offshore breeze brought the pungent
odor of balsam and spruce and it was
sharp with the cold of the Northland. We
impressed and expectant six stood upon the
bridge of the /. C. Ford, husky little pulp-
wood barge, and breathed in the intoxicating
exhalations with the quivering nostrils of
the atavistic man. The brilliant stars of
the north country lighted the night. Over
all was the silence of the wilderness.
It was midnight, yet the afterglow of the
tardy northern sun still tinted faintly the
hilltops. Ahead, maybe two miles, maybe
[i]
Chasing a Camp Site
ten miles, loomed the shadowy silhouette of
land, the North Shore of Lake Superior.
"Starboard some, Paddy," said Captain
Morrison, down through the trap to the
wheelsman.
Then sounded three staccato whistles,
then one and the engines stopped, for the
first time since we left Sault Ste. Marie,
twenty-four hours before, almost to the
minute by the engine-room clock. Diago-
nally across Lake Superior we had come.
"Look at that black Titan with his head
aflame," said Billy awedly. "It's stu-
pendous," said Mac. "The grandeur of it
is actually oppressive. Where 's Gepe?
He 'd rave over this. "
"Say," came Gepe's voice from the black-
ness of amidship, "which one of you fellows
took the corkscrew?"
At four o'clock that afternoon, when we
were still far out on the lake, we had picked
up that giant peak. It towered, we knew,
from somewhere in the centre of an island
[2]
The Portals of Play-Day
wilderness, known to the chart, the navigator,
and the lumberman as the Island of St.
Ignace, the second largest on Lake Su-
perior. Lying a barrier that divides the
fury of the great lake from the calm of
Nepigon Bay, it stretches its massive length
of inexorable granite, a huge rock twenty-
five miles long and six miles wide, the home
of moose and caribou, a place of almost
theatric beauty and rushing brooks and leaf-
canopied pools alive with trout, lurking in
the shadows.
For this moment, the first moment of a
long play-day, we had dreamed and pondered
and conferred with the delight of a common
anticipation and then packed and forgotten
things and locked office-desks and travelled
— almost long enough to cross the continent.
This was the Moment and on the bridge we
revelled in it in silence, while the Ford rolled
upon the long, majestic swell of Lake Superior.
"I don't know about it, boys," said the
Captain, thoughtfully lighting his wreck
Chasing a Camp Site
of a briar. The inky seas raced by the sides
of the ship.
"There's quite a lump of a sea running
in there and with your duffel your boats will
be down to the gunwale."
"You can't get in any closer?" ventured
the Camp Boss.
"There 's a hell of hungry reefs in there,"
said Captain Morrison, "and besides, its
the landing in the surf that '11 swamp you.
I can't help you there. I 'm in pretty far
now. "
A seventh sea, topping its contemporaries,
irritably slapped the Ford's bows. The
Captain spoke with more determination
then.
"I can take you around to the Blind
Channel to-night, and, if there 's no sea, you
can work around to Duncan's Cove your-
selves by to-morrow night — perhaps."
"And lose a day?" thought Gepe aloud,
for he had but thirty days to fish.
The Camp Boss looked around at the face
[4]
The Camp Boss Decides
of each of us six in the northern starlight.
Something he saw there seemed to reassure
him.
"We'll take a chance with the surf, I
guess, Captain," said the Camp Boss quietly,
for the Camp Boss, having been accustomed
to lead and make decisions for somebody since
his senior college year, ten years ago, always
spoke quietly, and the firmer his resolve,
the more quietly he expressed it.
"Good," said the Captain. "I knew
d well you would, but I wanted you
to say it."
The Captain walked to the rear of the
bridge and shouted into the depths of the
dark and silent ship:
"Stand by there, boys, to lower away
those two Mackinaws." Over the rail of
the Ford they toppled our two eighteen-foot
boats, any end up, painters alone fast to
stanchions, down into the inky, ice-cold
waters of Superior. They splashed and
filled and a man slipped down the painter
[5]
Chasing a Camp Site
and bailed them, as they bobbed upon each
wave, leaping for an instant into the gleam
of the ship's lights and then sinking into
the abyss again. Then came to the rail
for the lowering suit-cases and dunnage-
bags, rod-cases and boxes of bacon and coffee
and sugar and tea and crates of eggs, canned
things in barrels; for we were tenderfeet
then and knew not the economy of packing
and the peril of squandered space and excoss
weight.
It was fast work, for the Captain thought
the sea from off the lake might be rising, and
it was delicate work to lower away until the
man, bobbing around down there in the
spray and darkness, shouted to "hold" or
"let go" as he found the precise centre of
his mad little cork of a craft.
The attempt to anticipate one's wants
for a month in the wilderness — to foresee
all one's comforts, whims for a month — is an
intellectual achievement, and the accumu-
lation of it — the pile of it — for six men makes
[6]
Michael, Wilderness-Mentor
a shocking spectacle of selfishness, ignorance,
and dependence upon truly sybaritic luxury.
Of Gepe's steamer-trunk and bedroom slip-
pers more shall be said anon.
The men down there in the boats, bobbing
in the black water and the darkness, were
Michael (pronounced Michelle) Cadotte and
his son Joe, two full-blooded Chippewas
of the Garden River reservation. Michael
thinks he must be eighty years old. He may
be a hundred. He does n't know. Nobody
knows. By their first names he has known
generations of the country's distinguished
lawyers, doctors, bankers, supreme justices,
statesmen, for in the perfect democracy
of the wilderness there are no conventions,
stiff formality, or titles. Michael has been
guiding and packing fishing parties along
the rugged shores of Superior and up its
hundred rivers for fifty years. He knows
every likely pool and every moose yard.
He is the patriarch of Lake Superior guides.
His teeth and memory are not so good now.
[7]
Chasing a Camp Site
His hand trembles, too, and he sleeps between
heavier blankets. His children and grand-
children and great-grandchildren have em-
braced the religion of the white men in the
little missions and gaunt meeting-houses of
the shore settlements. But Michael still
looks with veneration upon "Gee-sus" —
the morning sun — as it rises over the granite
ridges and the tumbling waters of Superior.
Michael still leaves his offerings of tobacco
upon the rock knees of Nan-i-bou-jou, who
sits in petrified dignity, flanked by faithful
squaw, daughter, and two dogs, at that point
on the shore which the imaginative French
voyageurs first saw and straightway set out
to puzzle posterity by confusing it with
Rabelais's monster-man and called it Gar-
gantua. A gentle old savage, raconteur of
graphic and inexhaustible memory, and a
friend of great heart and vast loyalty is
Michael Cadotte.
When Michael and Joe had grasped all
that had been lowered from above and stowed
[8]
Nosie" Protests
it away, there was left even less freeboard
in those Mackinaws than Captain Morrison,
in things nautical omniscient, had foreseen.
The last article of excess baggage to be
lowered away into the depths was "Nosie,"
a dutiful, trustful, and exceedingly gritty
pointer-pup who thus far had, not illogically,
utterly failed to grasp the purposes of his
bringing and the potential delights of the
trip. He had shivered in the nipping northern
breezes on the bridge, learned to climb a
ladder timidly under the stress of a craving
for human society, brawled with the cook
over depredations upon the ice-box, and had
a thoroughly miserable voyage, unlightened
by any discernible future promise or indi-
cations of a guiding intelligence. Seized,
bound by the middle with a galling rope,
flung over the ship's side bodily to be dropped,
apparently, to bottomless depths without
redress or explanation, "Nosie" abandoned
himself to an ecstacy of terror and his screams
shattered the cathedral-like silence of the
Chasing a Camp Site
northern night. "Nosie" had seen no boats
lowered. How was he to know that this
was friendly expediency and not blackest
treachery? Promptly Joe seized him and
smothered his cries and struggles beneath
piles of warming duffel and "Nosie" was still.
Following "Nosie" down that rope, man
by man, we shared his trepidation. It is
not cheering to cling in midair, very chill,
black air at that, with mountains of icy
water racing beneath, to wait until a boat
conies up and meets one's feet and two sinewy
Indian arms reach out and drag one to a
very small dancing spot of comparative
safety.
Last to come over the side, bringing camera
and creel and all of Gepe's tobacco and fly-
books, which Gepe had, quite character-
istically, forgotten, came the Camp Boss,
which was quite proper and usual. And as
he twined his feet about the rope Captain
Morrison repeated his instructions.
"I figure," he said, "that Duncan's Cove
[10]
A Respite from the Cares of Authorship.
Luxuries Mourned
is just about dead-ahead as we lie now.
Steer by the easterly-most star of the Dipper,
the lower, big one there, and I don't think
you can miss it. I '11 lay-to here until I
-see you wave an 'all right' signal with the
lantern. Good luck to you and if they won't
rise to a fly, remember the muscallonge in
the lake three miles inland and keep ' Nosie '
for bait."
I remember thinking, when the Camp
Boss and Joe and "Nosie" and I pushed
that heavily-laden Mackinaw away from
the sides of the Ford, how fatuous and unfair
and unsportsmanly had been the thought,
when we first boarded the Ford, that she was
crude in her appointments and lacking in
the quasi-essential luxuries. Looking up at
her there from an eighteen -foot Mackinaw
headed into an unknown primitive, she
looked bigger and finer and more homelike
than the Mauretania, a lot more.
Once out of the wash of the steamer it
was n't so bad. The seas were long and low.
[ii]
Chasing a Camp Site
So deep were we in the water, though, that
rowing was tough. Loaves of bread and
rolling cans of bacon make neither stable
nor satisfying braces for one's feet, somehow.
Low moans from "Nosie's" anguished soul
for a while vied with the slush of the seas
under the boat's deep-laden bows.
There wasn't much conversation. Joe,
being an Indian, speaks in grunting mono-
syllables when spoken to, and in a situation
like this, spiced with a suggestion of danger,
Joe never speaks at all. He took short
but very deep and powerful strokes. It is
hard for a white man to row with an Indian.
He would stop every ten or fifteen minutes
and drink from his cupped hand, for his
mouth was dry. Joe was anxious to get
ashore.
A cloud on the Superior horizon as big
as a pocket-handkerchief will drive an Indian
ashore. For the boisterous, often brutal
and terrifying moods of Michabou (or
Nan-i-bou-jou), the "Great Hare," the Great
[12]
On Dark Waters Adrift
Spirit, the god of all things, the Indians have
a veneration that is much older than the
Christian era.
To row silently, interminably, in the shadow
of the northern midnight upon a strange sea,
toward a wild shore whose forest-tipped
cliffs rise dimly in the darkness, is a spooky
experience. There is an unreality about it.
The silence, the vague odors of the woods,
the brilliant northern zenith, the rush of
the stygian water, the proximity of the
unknown suggest such thoughts as, material-
ized and given concrete expression, gave to
the world the weird genius of Gustave Dor£.
Anyway, it galvanized the imaginations
of the six of us, but two days away from
steel office-buildings and the table d'h6te
dinner of the club.
We rowed on, to us it may have seemed an
aeon or so. Actually it was about an hour.
The shadowed shore seemed to come no
nearer. Curious, we thought, that trees
and bushes, which we had seen easily five
[13]
Chasing a Camp Site
miles out in the lake, were now no larger.
Then we knew. They were not merely
trees. The silhouette was the granite wall
of the lake shore, cliffs that leap stark from
the water. Some are twenty-five feet, some
a hundred feet. The map does n't show that
Superior is a vast bath-tub, with towering
Laurentian granite substituted for immacu-
late domestic porcelain.
"Can you see the lights of the other boat?"
The Camp Boss's voice shattered the brood-
ing silence to infinitesimal bits. Frankly,
I could n't. Joe could. An Indian can see
smoke where to the white man there is
nothing and hear sounds for which nature
has trained his tympanum alone for cen-
turies to abnormal sensitiveness.
"They're away from Ford," said Joe.
"Maybe two miles, but driftin' sou. They
no see us."
"Show them our lantern," said the Camp
Boss. I quickly, and I thought accurately,
judged that the emergency called precisely
[14]
Midnight Greetings
for the "all right" signal. I waved the
lantern as I had seen railroad men and
surveyors convey that same satisfying in-
telligence. Results were prompt and emi-
nently convincing.
Captain Morrison, by no means illogi-
cally, concluded that that "all right" signal
had come from the beach; that we had
safely ridden the surf and landed upon a
tolerant , if not hospitable shore. Three hoarse
whistles ripped to shreds the silence of the
sleeping wilderness. Bedlam, piercing and
disturbing, broke loose far to the right in
the darkness. A vast colony of gulls on
some wave-worn rock had been disturbed
from their slumbers and shriekingly resented
the intrusion. It was the crowning touch
to the illusion of the unknown and the
absurdly unreal.
"She's putting out into the lake," said
the Camp Boss. "But we can't be far off-
shore now."
It was an accurate prognosis. Green light
[15]
Chasing a Camp Site
swung to port. Red light disappeared. The
light on foremast described an arc. Lights
of cabin astern then came into view. The
old Ford, comfortable in the fancied assurance
that she had put six tenderfeet safely ashore
where the worst they could do to themselves
was to hook trout-flies in one another's
ears or overeat, turned majestically and
steamed out into Lake Superior to resume
the sordid but serious business of feeding
pulp-wood to newspapers and giving "pub-
lic opinion" a medium of sensational ex-
pression.
"There goes the tail of civilization," said
the Camp Boss.
"Where's dat?" and Joe peered about
apprehensively. "Nosie" burst forth with
an agony of hysterical repining. It is
"Nosie," anyway, who should have written
the intimate chronicles of this trip.
"Hear water," said Joe. "Maybe water-
fall."
"It 's Duncan's Cove then," said the Boss
[16]
A Too-Literal Landing
with unmistakable elation in his voice. "The
little river empties in there and there 's quite
a waterfall. It seems to be over there to the
right, now."
It was "over to the right." It kept
moving to the right, too. Phenomena of
floating islands obtruded themselves upon
my boyhood memories, but among them was
absolutely no precedent for a perambulating
waterfall, bent upon nocturnal depredations
and cunningly scheming to lure the unso-
phisticated voyager to his doom. We chased
that waterfall in an arc of forty-five degrees.
It ran along the shore, always to the right,
always singing alluringly, ever louder, and
we chased it, always pressing to starboard,
and tried to head it off.
Then the North Shore sprang out on us,
frowning precipices, with balsams and spruces
hanging dizzily over the abyss. The surf
was hurling itself against the sheer wall of
rock, swirling over reefs yellow-fanged, and
the echo was flung back and out over the
[17]
Chasing a Camp Site
vast reaches of Superior. This was our
fugitive waterfall.
"Back water, hard!" shouted the Camp
Boss. Tins of bacon, rod-cases, suit-cases
gravitated forward upon "Nosie" as Joe
and I buried the oars in the choppy back-
wash and backed the top-heavy Mackinaw
out of the gaping jaws.
"A beach over there," muttered Joe. To
starboard again, beneath the black shadow
of the cliffs, we rowed, the surf booming
furiously at the ends of our oars. It was
taking gross and wide liberties with one's
long-established conception of a beach when
we found it. It was not sandy and gentle
and hospitable. It was a shelving shore of
pebbles, wonderfully uniform in shape, quite
round, worn by an eternity of storms, and in
size the diameter of an adult human skull.
That is the kind of beaches that Superior
makes. Everything is done upon a scale
so heroic that it terrifies.
"Can we land, Joe?" asked the Camp Boss.
[i 8]
Mingling with the Environment
"We must," said Joe with his usual scorn
of mental reservations and hypothetical
conditions.
And we did. We accumulated what head-
way we could. The Boss selected a place,
ghostly white in the pale starlight, where
the "pebbles" looked smoothest and most
yielding. The combers behind us co-operated
with suspicious cordiality. They picked us
up and we started shoreward in long, in-
toxicating bounds. There was a grating
noise beneath the bow. "Now!" said Joe,
and he went over one side and I went over
the other. Purpose, breath, my very ego
were gone by the time my feet struck the
uneven bottom. I was in waist-deep. The
cold of Superior water is quite unbelievable.
It varies less than five degrees the year
round.
"Lift!" shouted Joe. The next roller was
not an enemy but an ally. We three, Joe, the
roller, and I, heaved together and mightily.
Five feet out on the "pebbles" lunged the
[19]
Chasing a Camp Site
Mackinaw. We hoped to do better. Another
such comber would swamp us. Flour, tea,
coffee, clothing, blankets would go down
with the flood. Without prologue or preface
Joe began unloading. He filled the air with
nondescript camping outfits and assorted
groceries. "Nosie" was swept up in the
vortex and joined the aerial excursion of
articles, describing the same graceful para-
bolic curve. They all landed in a neat little
pile about twenty feet up the beach. I have
never seen firemen, customs officers, or baggage
smashers show ambition so laudable or form
so flawless. I recall dimly in the transmea-
tion of seeing "Nosie" trajected with a
broiler and a diaphanous head-net snared
in his chain and imparting both dignity and
accuracy to his flight. When the boat was
sufficiently jettisoned, we caught her and on
those round stones she shot up the beach,
well beyond the reach of that snarling surf.
So deeply absorbed were we in the pressing
work of saving duffel and rods and "eats"'
[20]
A Rift and Some Shelter in the Shore Rocks.
Catastrophe or Quadrille?
from the hungry waters of the most pictur-
esque perpetual ice-cooler in the world, that
the light of the second boat escaped us.
Also, the boom of the surf drowned her crew's
shouts of inquiry, at first eager, then, not
unnaturally, irritable, even impatient. With
their oars they were holding their boat with
difficulty just beyond the clutch of the
combers and watching our three forms dart
about upon excursions, apparently, of frivolity
and sheer light-heartedness. At last Gepe's
stentorian voice bridged the turmoil of the
waters:
" Say, what are you doing in there — dancing
a quadrille or laying carpets?" »We gave
them minute instructions, laying particular
stress upon possible improvements over our
own recent methods and achievements.
"It all sounds very simple and attractive,"
shouted Billy, "except that jumping over-
board business."
" We '11 cut that out, " added Gepe. "Let
her go."
[21]
Chasing a Camp Site
Their coming was really dramatic, so full
of determination and courage and confidence
in our counsel. We took the lantern and
lined up, four of us, Camp Boss, Joe, " Nosie,"
and I, on the beach to welcome them to the
vibrant wilderness. Gepe stood gracefully
poised in the prow, one foot on the gunwale,
lantern raised high. Washington, Father
Marquette, Columbus, snapped under similar
circumstances, had obviously impressed their
poses upon Gepe. His boat had two more
men and much more duffel and bacon and
Scotch whiskey than ours. So it was much
heavier. It had more momentum and, with
greater draught, struck the bottom sooner.
Also it seemed to strike the bottom harder
and stop more abruptly. Prompt and im-
plicit obedience to physical laws was to Gepe
religion. As fell from the heavens the proud
Lucifer, so lantern and Gepe arose splendidly
from the bow, soared, turned their zenith,
and plunged theatrically into Lake Superior
at our very feet. To the platitude that
[22]
On the Shore, Anyway
"opportunity makes the man" I have been
little attracted. This, however, was posi-
tively Gepe's first contact with wilderness
exigencies and Lake Superior water and the
manner in which his descriptive vocabulary,
in the elasticity of which we had ever had
the greatest confidence, arose to the occasion
marked him as a man of versatility and re-
source. It was thrilling, splendid.
"The first wireless message," said the
Camp Boss, as we salvaged Gepe. The boat,
lightened of the onus of the picturesque and
propelled by four oars that were vivaciously
deluging the steersman, was caught by the
next comber. We met her half-way. The
aerial transit scene was re-enacted. Caught
in the first shower of unyielding, winging
cooking utensils, Gepe retired out of range
to prance about and facilitate the return of
his circulation.
With the light of the lantern and the
myriad of highly entertained stars we took
inventory of party and outfit. Gepe, wetly
[23]
Chasing a Camp Site
demonstrative; Bill, satirically sympathetic
and looking for a dry cigarette; Marv., the
scientist, studying the constellations to locate
Duncan's Cove; Mac, frantically upturning
a chaos of duffel for his beloved Leonard rod ;
Michael and Joe, Indian-like, looking for
firewood on the heels of a cataclysm; Camp
Boss, as usual, anxious only for the safety
of the outfit and the comfort of each; and I,
still stunned by the first breath of adventure
and the first meeting with the forces of wild
nature that had ever come into an orderly
and flawlessly prosaic city life — we were all
there — and were ashore, which was a great
deal.
To an Indian a fire is the beginning and
end of all things. He sees in it, not only his
bodily comfort, but his courage, his spiritual
content — his Nan-i-bou-jou. Michael and
Joe had a fire snapping before the air was well
cleared of imprecations, flying duffel, and
anxious interrogation. The Indian before
the white man came knew the comforts and
[24]
Magic Colors in the East
joys of the fire. The white man takes to it
with an amity and avidity that give evolu-
tion a fresh clue to the atavistic man.
That fire brought to us the romance, the
charm, the humor of the incident and our
current predicament. We rimmed it round,
turning first one side and then another.
We found that we could smoke and enjoy
it. We found corkscrew and needful stimu-
lant. We found that dry clothes were actu-
ally procurable in that mound of duffel. We
found our blankets — dry — heaven for such
bounty be thanked!
It was two o'clock by Billy's infallible
timepiece when order had quite come out
of chaos and the tranquillity of civilization
settled down again upon this strange night
scene in the wilderness.
The surf had ceased to boom so defiantly.
The night was far spent. Indeed, the east
was beginning to show magic colors. In
the thickets somewhere the heartsore little
"Canada bird" was voicing its eternal grief
[25]
Chasing a Camp Site
in those four weird little minor notes. It
was the beginning of a new day — yes, thirty
new days, vacation days, days of fishing,
exploring, conjecturing, maybe a little inno-
cent dreaming of ambitions unattained and
achievements and fame to come; days of
most intimate confidence, perfect democracy,
and purest and least selfish brotherhood —
the brotherhood of the wilderness — where
vanity and selfishness stand out as gaunt
and chilling as the skeleton of the fire-scourged
pine. Vacation days! Oh, the lure of them,
the delight of their anticipation, the joys of
their realization, and the sweet sanctity of
their memory!
"The last man in bed puts out the light,"
said Billy and he rolled into his blankets
upon the stones. Then we slept beneath
the stars for the first time and a loon laughed
maniacally far out on the lake — and dawn
awakened us to look upon the wilderness —
also for the first time — and life and youth
and nature and God seemed very good.
[26]
CHAPTER II
DISCOVERIES, DAY-DREAMS, AND MENDACITY
AT DUNCAN'S COVE
THE glare in our eyes of the morning sun,
reflected upon the mirror-surface of
Lake Superior, in aff ablest mood, awakened
us. It is a curious and bewildering sensa-
tion, two days from civilization, to awaken
at four o'clock upon a wilderness-shore. A
gull overhead scanned us and screamed
frank disapproval. On one side the dazzling
waters of the lake lost themselves in a cloud-
less horizon, a clean stretch to the South
Shore, 250 miles away. Fog, blown in from
the lake, was crowning the tree-tops of the
islands. On the other side there arose the
bank, clad with osier, spruce, and balsam,
and capped with pine and the dainty birch,
"the white lady of the wood." To retrace
and relive in two seconds the events of two
[27]
At Duncan's Cove
days is a severe mental effort. The vibrant,
glorious Present arose and smote me squarely
between the eyes, when, rising in my blanket,
I saw that hideous mound of assorted duffel
and caught the vagrant bouquet of coffee
upon the nipping lake airs. Michael and
Joe, of course, were exchanging intimate
Chippewa confidences over the inevitable
fire. Eggs and bacon spluttered. The com-
missary was organizing. Gepe's head emerged
from a nimbus of blankets where his feet
supposititiously were. The morning toilet
was rudimentary. The hapless "Nosie,"
looking upon the fire as the first symptom
of returning intelligence in his gods, hugged
it shiveringly.
Then the voice of the Camp Boss hailed us.
Around a rocky promontory he pulled a boat.
The sun had found him awake and prepared,
alone, to scout the shore-line for Duncan's
Cove. He had found it, too, as we should
have found it, had that siren "waterfall"
not lured us from the Captain's explicit
[28]
•I
At Last — Duncan's Cove!
'They 're Rising, Right in Front of Camp!"
Duncan's Cove Upside Down
course. Tin dishes are very good in the
wilderness, but stone-china, retaining its
heat longer, is better — though heavier and
that in camping is of vital importance.
A light breeze was ruffling the lake when
we had breakfasted and reloaded the boats.
They were loaded to the gunwales, too,
but there was as yet no sea and we spread
the sails and bowled down the lowering,
inexorable shore. Two miles and there
opened up an indentation much the shape
of the hand. Lake Superior delights in
running her fingers into the shore-line.
Duncan's Cove is at the extreme tip of the
middle-finger. Superior was already working
up her regular noonday temper, but, when
we swung into the cove, there was no ripple
to mar the perfect reflection of rocks and
trees and rugged hillside. The silent scene
was reproduced perfectly upside down.
It is snappy work and hilarious work to
unload boats for that first camp in the
wilderness — and hurl duffel, bread, canned
[29]
At Duncan's Cove
things, rods, cameras, lanterns from hand
to hand, until the man up the bank, of
course Gepe, is deluged, smothered, and
shouts for a coadjutor.
There is a rare camping spot at Duncan's
Cove. There is an ice-cold spring for butter
— if you have it. There are tiny trout, too,
in that spring. Few can have live trout
in the refrigerator. There is a flat surface
for the tents and hills tower on two sides,
giving protection from the lake gales. There
is a wealth of driftwood on the beach for
your fire and balsam near by for your in-
comparable bed of boughs.
Camp was made with significant alacrity
that morning. The bags and carpet-rolls
were opened and blankets draped upon the
bushes for airing and drying.
Then the realization of the dreams of
weeks, nay months! Out came books of
flies, " leader "-boxes, silken lines, and intricate
reels of fabulous price. Oh, the guile and
eloquence of the sporting-goods dealer and
[30]
PQ
PQ
The Little Brown Hackle
his insidious catalogue! The law should
protect helplessly impressionable fishermen
from the deadly lure of that illustrated
catalogue. Trout-rods, perfunctory ones and
priceless ones, were put together with trem-
bling fingers. There was much discussion
of the gastronomic tastes and epicurean
whims of Superior trout, whether it should
be lake flies or stream flies, Parmachenee
Belle or Professor or Montreal or Silver
Doctor or Coachman or the inornate but
strangely reliable little Brown Hackle.
We found the little river quickly — scarcely
a half-mile from camp. It was but a large
and self-important sort of a brook, anyway.
It came roaring out of an arch of birch and
spruce and osier bushes, leaving the black
shadows, and then, hurdling the beach, gushed
out arrogantly into Superior. Where the
gushing was going on, the Camp Boss was
the first to cast. His three flies swished from
the back-cast, perilously close to the waiting
bushes, and settled lightly in the laughing
[31]
At Duncan's Cove
ripple. We had n't long to wait. A white
little stomach shot out of the water for the
dropper-fly. The Boss struck and his line
started for the far shore. Bill, in the torrent
waist-deep, netted them, two of them, after
ten minutes full of fight. Three trout on
three flies are not infrequent in these far-
away streams. Perhaps the spectacle of a
brother - trout, apparently chasing tempting
entries that seem to elude him, is irresistible.
The Boss, Gepe, and Mac whipped the
shore about the brook-mouth. The rest
of us pushed through the thickets for the
brook's pools. At last we came upon a
moose-trail, a boulevard paralleling the
brook's sinuous length. O! the delight of
hunting pools on an unknown trout-stream!
I remember one particularly. The moose-
trail led up to and over a great black boulder.
When we reached the top, we saw that the
boulder bathed its feet in a shadowy pool,
in diameter perhaps forty feet. The sun,
peeping through the interstices of branches,
[32]
They Were There
made golden mosaics upon its surface. I
crept up and looked down into the depths.
THEY were there! Very cautiously a rod
was drawn up. The flies were cautiously
lowered. When they touched the water,
trout seemed to rush from all directions at
once. They leaped a foot clear of the water.
They hooked themselves. Then the problem
of raising two pounds or so of fighting trout
up a ten-foot wall on a five-ounce rod! There
was no possible way to net them. We caught
some and we lost many.
The Duncan's Cove brook is scarcely a
half-mile long. Then it finds a reedy marsh
and loses itself in it. But there are two
good pools and innumerable little pockets
and alcoves, each with a good trout lurking
and hungry always. One pool has a four-
foot waterfall. It is deep and dark and
the water dashes excitedly about its rocky
sides like a bad-tempered little maelstrom.
There is a clearing there that makes casting
possible. Billy lost his heart to this pool.
3 [33]
At Duncan's Cove
The Camp Boss said it was recrudescence
of the egotistic Narcissus and the resistless
reflection. Billy fell into that pool twice
and made the grand tour each time with the
current, applauded by a cheering gallery,
before he found his feet on the stony bottom.
Maybe it was that intimacy that wrought his
enchantment. I do not think that a score
of gentleman-wanderers have ever fished
that beloved little brook at Duncan's Cove.
Nature was in a tender mood when that
brook was born.
We dined on our first trout that night and
most luxuriously, and before we dined the
thermometer, dangling from its birch tree,
as no thermometer doubtless ever dangled
before, performed some astounding gym-
nastics. The day had been warm and in
the thickets the black flies were solicitous,
particularly to Gepe, who coated himself
lavishly with the odoriferous "Lallakapop"
and called upon heaven to witness his un-
merited tribulations. The thermometer at
[34]
Thermic Gymnastics
6.30 P.M. registered 70 degrees. The instant
the sun dropped behind the high hills, that
vast and self-replenishing refrigerator, Lake
Superior, asserted its resistless will. Down,
down went the mercury. In 35 minutes it
fell 29 degrees and stopped to catch its
breath for a moment at 41. We were per-
spiring at 6.30 P.M. — at 7.30 we were looking
for a second sweater and huddling about a
roaring camp-fire of dry pine logs. The after-
glow was still flashing a false sunset at 10.30
when we turned in. The northern heavens
are indescribably brilliant. Preparing for
bed on the lake shore generally consists of
removing one's boots, belt, and eye-glasses,
if one wears them, and borrowing what
clothes one's tent-mate professes not to need.
We heard a cow moose, far off in the tangled
thickets of the island, calling her forest-
suitor before we reluctantly left the fire.
Then a tin cup of amazingly cold water, one
more look at the myriad stars, one more
message from a loon, laughing idiotically
[35]
At Duncan's Cove
far out on the lake, and1 then the profound,
dreamless slumber of the wilderness.
I protest that personally I had no hand
in the outrage whatever. Billy and Mac
were up early. They had bathed hurriedly
and in relays; I mean each in a relay. The
part of the body that is submerged in Superior
one minute grows numb with the exquisite
pain of it. Billy and Mac merely splashed
themselves. I heard what each one said
to himself while he was thus splashing. It
was, as I remember it, very earnest and fervid
sort of monologue, too, rich with spontaneous
observations and scriptural references. All
this was before breakfast, of course. Gepe
slept soundly through the uproar of the bath.
When he poked his head out of his tent
Billy and Mac were wrapped in bath-towels
on the beach and engaged largely in the
serious business of restoring circulation.
Naturally, Gepe asked the superfluous ques-
tion— the situation was ripe for it — and
wanted to know what Billy and Mac had been
[36]
The Age-Defying Conspiracy
doing. They might easily and veraciously
have answered that they had been leading
a cotillion or buying a touring-car. But they
did n't. They wilfully and viciously de-
ceived Gepe. Billy said: "We've been
swimming out in the lake." It's difficult
to convey an accurate idea of the craft in
that retort of Billy's. Gepe fell. "Isn't
it cold? " he questioned half-heartedly. " Oh,
maybe it is out in the lake, away out,"
admitted Billy airily, "but in this shallow
cove here — why, it 's almost too warm.
Isn't it, Mac?" "Yes," said Mac through
chattering teeth — "why, it 's hardly any fun
to swim in such hot water. It 's almost
enervating."
"Sounds pretty good to me," said Gepe,
and he emerged from his tent, whistling, with
towel on arm and soap in hand — and nothing
else.
They showed him a log — on which he
could "walk out to deep water and dive."
At the end of the log, Gepe, more perfunc-
[37]
At Duncan's Cove
torily than anything else, a survival of boy-
hood tradition at the swimming-hole, stuck
two toes into the flood. He stopped whistling.
He turned and looked over his shoulder.
Black suspicion, misgiving, terror were in
that look. Gently they began to roll the
log. First, Gepe stormed and threatened.
Then he begged, oh, so piteously! Then
he sprang lightly into air and disappeared.
And Michael met him at the beach, with
Gepe's own flask.
There is here introduced a new member of
the party. It may seem an abrupt sort of
an introduction, but it will be seen that the
member figures prominently in subsequent
events. Indeed, had it not been for this
member, these chronicles would not be, which
may or may not be construed as a grateful
apodosis. The name of the new member is
Wagush, which in pure Chippewa is ' ' The Fox, ' '
and Wagush is a wonderfully conscientious eigh-
teen-foot gasoline launch of hallowed memory.
The Wagush, too, came up to us on the little
[38]
Enter Wagush Explosively
pulp-steamer, /. C. Ford. She took joyously
to the wilderness, though the confidence
with which she shattered the sacred silences
with her staccato explosions, for a while
put our teeth on edge. We could not have
gone without the Wagush.
With her we found rivers Number One,
Two, and Three and Squaw Harbor and
Pappoose Bay and Otter Cove and the won-
derful reef fishing off Richardson's Island
and Caulkins's Beach. It meant circum-
navigating St. Ignace Island, a two days'
trip, to meet the Ford at ''Headquarters,"
the lumber camp and loading station. But
Wagush was indeed worth it. Our radius
of operation was increased from about three
to fifteen miles, without moving our per-
manent camp at Duncan's Cove.
We had heard of the reef fishing and the
source of the information was spontaneous
and picturesque. I once wrote a newspaper
article about St. Ignace Island. I had
interviewed a man who "looked timber"
[391
At Duncan's Cove
there. It appealed to me. He told me
about a great lake in the depths of the
island, "alive with trout and muscallonge, "
possibly whales and ichthyosauri. As I re-
member, I had that lake rather thoroughly
congested. Nobody but this mendacious
"timber-looker" had ever seen that lake,
he said. What he didn't know about that
lake I did, when I got well into the produc-
tion of the interview. A dear old gentleman-
fisherman down in Ohio read that interview.
Evidently, he saw symptoms that convinced
him that I might yet be saved. He had
fished and hunted St. Ignace and began his
enchantment in 1884 when the Canadian
Pacific Railroad was in the building along
the North Shore. He spoke to me kindly,
but convincingly and at length. He heaped
coals of fire upon my irresponsible head by
sending me charts of St. Ignace and its
littoral nicely marked in red-ink to locate
the wonderful reef fishing. We have drunk
healths to his charity and sportsmanly
[40]
A Toy Archipelago
generosity and read prayers for his beatifi-
cation. For we found his reefs and the trout
which he had somehow overlooked.
In Wagush and one Mackinaw boat in tow
we started before Superior had developed
the daily tantrum. We had frying-pan, tea-
pot, bread, camera, and fishing-tackle. St.
Ignace is the granite centrepiece of an
archipelago. There are hundreds of islands,
varying in size from mere gull-rocks, half-
submerged reefs, to Wilson, Simpson, Salter,
and Richardson's, scarcely less imposing
than St. Ignace, their big taciturn sister.
Through wonderful little channels, opening
up surprisingly where, a moment before,
only the shore seemed to be; across silent
enchanted bays and bayous; past deceptive
alcoves in the shore that looked like river-
mouths and were not, we skimmed that
silvery morning.
Once we turned a rocky point suddenly and
surprised a mother duck and her furry little
brood not yet able to fly. The mother
[41]
At Duncan's Cove
scorned to seek the safety of her wings in
the face of this hideous coughing peril and
they tore away with astonishing speed over
the surface of the water, a screen of whitest
foam upon a field of green. We must have
left that demoralized brood with conversa-
tional material for all indigenous fish-ducks'
posterity.
Many times we ran in toward the shore
confident that we had found a river and many
times that blind shore-line laughed at us —
of such infinite variety are the conformations
that they are bewildering in their very
monotony.
It was pure chance that we did find River
Number Two at all, though we were scarcely
a hundred yards from the shore when abreast
of it. We had looked for rapids, perhaps
a waterfall, at the very least a " riffle. "
There was none of these. There did n't
seem to be much current. Yet it was a river,
because we could trace its bed winding far
inland through a valley by the lighter green
[42]
'There 's a Rare Camping-Spot at Duncan's Cove.
9 -)-
He was Lurking at the River-Mouth.
Entangling Alliances
of the trees and bushes that lined its tor-
turous course. Cautiously we poled launch
and tow-boat to casting-range and a colony
of trout rushed to their rare taste of civili-
zation and its dissipations. Three men
casting simultaneously from an eighteen-foot
launch can together produce an entertain-
ment full of life, color, and comment-pro-
voking situations. Gepe began auspiciously
by hooking himself in a place where ex-
traction was the least convenient to Gepe.
Then Marv. wrapped a back-cast deftly
about the Camp Boss's neck, and the Camp
Boss put a Montreal No. 3 in the exhaust
pipe — of the launch-engine — of course.
As if this little exchange of amity and
comity offered too little variety, Billy and
Mac drifted up nonchalantly in the tow-boat
and began inserting fly-hooks and festooning
lines in such portions of launch and its occu-
pants' anatomies as the crew had overlooked.
We caught trout up to a pound. The sport
palled and it began to look too much like
[431
At Duncan's Cove
game-hogging. Then the reefs outside, snarl-
ing in foam, called to us.
It is not always that one can fish the reefs
of Lake Superior. I have waited and fretted
and brooded in camp for a week for those
white-caps to cease their snarling over
yellow-fanged rocks where the biggest trout
lie. One must catch Superior in sunny humor
and that is n't often; generally it is in the
very early morning or as evening is closing
in on a brilliant day. These reefs are every-
where along the whole Superior coast. They
may mark the entrance to bay or cove or
channel between islands. They may be
near some little river's mouth, or they may
stand out stark and isolated, a sinister splotch
of snow, a white signal of great peril upon
the green of the deep water, with the brown
rocks of the shore completing the picture
of triumphant wilderness. The only essen-
tials for trout are that the water be com-
paratively shallow, ten feet at the most;
and that the bottom, the size and shape and
[44]
Fontinalis, a Wanderer
arrangement of the rocks on the lake-floor,
offer feeding places for trout. That is
known generally as a "likely" reef and no
other characterization is at all illuminating
nor adequate. We have caught trout in
water that was green in depth-color, bathing
rocks on the shore that towered up two
hundred feet. And we have caught them
five miles from the nearest river-mouth.
And they are brook-trout, fontinalis, a
little less brilliantly colored, perhaps, and
a little, a very little, more silvery — but
fontinalis just the same. On the South
Shore they are called "coasters," and it is
off the reef that one gets the three, four, even
five pounders — only the Nepigon, Steel, and
Agawa Rivers know bigger fish.
Personally, I have found the brilliant
salmon flies, such as Silver Doctor, Royal
Coachman, and even Red Ibis, the best lure
for reef-casting. One beloved and battered
Parmachenee Belle that now, in its honorable
scars of battle, looks like a last season's
[451
At Duncan's Cove
picture-hat, has brought a dozen trout from
elysium in the green depths. The sport of
reef fishing lies, perhaps, in the length of
line upon which one gets the fish, the facility
for casting, and the amazing gaminess and
ferocity of the fish. It appears to be the
consensus of passably expert opinion among
Superior fishermen that the best reef fishing
of the lake is to be found off the rocks at
the entrance to the Little Pic River. But,
literally, everywhere there is reef fishing.
We did very well on those reefs ; the official
Log says so. Just how well it were immodest
and unnecessary to chronicle. We did better
over those reefs in another year. We had
with us then a very gentle, willing, enthusi-
astic, lovable tenderfoot in the person of a
nature-hungry Business Man. All he knew
about casting or patching a birchbark canoe
he had gleaned by assiduous reading of
the instruction-departments of the vacation-
magazines and those devilish catalogues of
the sporting-goods men. It will be seen at
[46]
bx>
G
'So
C
CO
I8
U) a
o -^
« ^
The Business Man Casts
a glance how intimate and intensive the
Business Man's camping-erudition really was.
He had a wonderful fishing outfit. He
knew it was wonderful, because it had cost
him $525.72. The 72 cents was for an
aluminum safety-pin, "quickly, safely, and
neatly" to "fasten leader-box to alligator-
skin belt."
The Business Man had done lots of spec-
tacular and delightful things before we
reached the reefs, but here was his ripest
achievement. We told him how to cast
and, conjuring up his full, profound theo-
retical knowledge he did so — while his boat-
mates sought cover beneath the seats and
stern-sheets. Trout are full of caprices.
One rushed at the Business Man's fly as
with it he roughly lashed the water into
foam. He didn't see the fish and looked
surprised when we called his attention to
the pleasing incident. Another foolish trout
tried to catch the fleeting vision of food, and
tugged the Business Man's line. The situa-
[471
At Duncan's Cove
tion was novel to him. He could n't recall
what good usage demanded. So he did
nothing. He explained afterward that he
thought it might be the safe and courteous
course to permit the trout to swallow the fly
right down to his tail, if he cared to, and
then deftly pull the trout inside-out, thus
saving much irksome culinary labor. We
expostulated with the Business Man and
told him to "strike" the instant the trout
took the fly, before he could bite it and learn
the hollow mockery of the snare. The third
trout came. The Business Man threw his
whole 1 80 pounds into the strategy and jerked.
We found on his tail-fly a tragic bit of fish-
gill. We counselled, then, alacrity and force,
but both in moderation.
I have often thought that the trout on the
reef that day were deliberately baiting that
Business Man. The fourth trout came.
Possibly he was looking for an extractor of
an aching or superfluous gill. The Business
Man struck and the trout stuck. Came,
[48]
A Line in Pleasant Places
then, a wealth of hearty and conflicting
suggestions. The Business Man reeled and
gave out line, rushed over people's feet,
shouted for the landing net, and implored
silence and sea-room. Then panic seized
him and claimed him as its own. He in-
continently dropped his rod to the bottom
of the boat, seized his line, and began hauling
in that trout hand-over-hand in long, sweeping
jerks. In about two jerks it was all over
— save for the Business Man. Then he
dropped his reel overboard and we had to
haul in fifty yards of line before we could
net it. The Business Man, however, has
lived down that dark and hilarious chapter.
He is now a blood-brother of the North Shore.
[491
CHAPTER III
AT THE KNEE OF MICHAEL
YOU will not find Squaw Harbor nor
Pappoose Bay on the maps of St.
Ignace Island, which resolutely warns Lake
Superior back from the refuge of Nepigon
Bay. There is reason for that. There is
really so much in Lake Superior to put on the
map and the few people who are there to
cut pulp- wood or run surveys or just fish are
really much too busy to trifle with a topo-
graphical feature that spans less than three
or four miles. There is no drug store on
the island whose kindly city-directory, be-
tween the cigar case and the telephone, tells
you what car line to take to Squaw Harbor
and Pappoose Bay. There is no corner
policeman with ponderous circumlocution,
nor small boy with suspicious alacrity to
[50]
Joe Cadotte, Guide and Wilderness-Brother.
When Superior Begins to Sulk.
Tactful Candor
direct you, either. Yet Squaw Harbor and
Pappoose Bay are on the southern shore of
St. Ignace Island, about five and one half
miles, which in the northern wilderness
signifies quite nothing whatever, from Dun-
can's Cove. There! The secret is out.
I am wilfully and nefariously violating the
very canons of fishermen's ethics in telling
you these places by their really, truly names
and giving mileage with such wanton ex-
plicitness. There is reason, or, at least,
palliation for this confidence. You could
get right up to the doors of Squaw Harbor
and Pappoose Bay and push the button with-
out recognizing the neighborhood. I could
give you red-inked charts and careful triangu-
lations and landmarks and a slap on the
back and you could not find Squaw Harbor
or Pappoose Bay without a guide, and you
could spend a month hunting around Nepigon
or Rossport or Port Arthur for a guide who
really knows St. Ignace Island. Occa-
sionally, there arise those concrete situations
[51]
At the Knee of Michael
when honesty is not only "the best policy,"
but really a very showy sort of a literary
expedient.
It was noontime when we found Squaw
Harbor. We had fished the reefs and a sea
was beginning to roll in from the old lake
which made reef-casting futile and highly
gymnastic. We very much wanted a place
to moor the launch and build a fire for tea-
pot and frying-pan. First, we saw a beach
of wonderful flat stones. We followed this
beach around. It was the left shore, evi-
dently, of a likely-looking cove. The right
shore was rocks and timber down to the very
water's edge, an impenetrable wall. We stuck
close to the beach, running under a check,
turning always to the left, until we abruptly
slid into a crystal basin, a perfect oval, per-
haps fifteen feet deep; but so wondrously calm
and clear was the water, that pebbles on the
bottom sparkled in the chromatic reflection.
We sailed slowly to the end of this enchanted
pool and found that a wooded strip scarcely
[52]
A Titan's Bath-Tub
twenty feet wide was all that separated us
from Lake Superior, booming outside. We
were back at the point where we had first
found the beach, afloat in a perfect miniature
harbor. Billy called it "Superior's guest-
chamber." Superior has many such guest-
chambers, though none so symmetrical and
wholly bewitching as this.
We lunched on that beach. The launch
was pulled out; the bow on the beach, the
stern in fifteen feet of water in a natural
bath-tub built for a Titan. The flat stones
made a stove of quaint architecture but
admitted efficiency. We fried the trout.
We brewed the tea. What fabulous divi-
dends would the metropolitan cafe* pay that
could specialize in fried trout, toast, tea
and marmalade such as that! But no cafe*
can, for it is not the trout and toast and tea
and marmalade, labor of love though they
are, but the sauce of the wilderness.
With the marmalade there returned suffi-
cient strength for the quite inevitable aca-
[53]
At the Knee of Michael
demic discussion. Billy spoke admiringly
of the "dry-fly" casting necessary to lure
the highly educated trout in the streams
of English country estates. Gepe scoffed
at the skill which casting of such nice accuracy
and flawless technique entails. Billy bet a
ten-dollar note — a sagacious wager always
in the wilderness — or a package of real
Turkish cigarettes, that he could keep his
fly in the air until he was ready to drop it
into the water and could then drop it within
six inches of the spot he coveted.
They repaired to the edge of that wonder-
ful beach. The "gallery" left the "lunch
things" and went to applaud and sneer.
Billy performed spectacularly. His fly winged
about like a thing alive. Then he said
"here goes" and aimed at a cork — Gepe's
contribution — floating thirty-five feet out in
the harbor. The fly alighted, softly as a
snow-drop, scarcely an inch from the cork.
Billy started his back-cast, for the fly must
not be permitted to get wet. His rod fairly
[54]
A Taste for Antiques
doubled on itself. There was a swirl of
water and a gutteral exclamation from Billy.
In that fraction of a second that his fly had
rested on the water a lunking trout had taken
it and was now racing lakeward. He was
brought back cautiously, only to stampede
again and yet again. At last we drew him
out on the beach, belly-up. Ranged along
that beach, casting-distance apart, we killed
a half dozen fish. I had a curious mishap.
Thoughtlessly I had brought a very old
book of very old flies, a heritage, I think.
In a mad moment I had mixed those flies
with modern and staunch ones. An old
fly had insidiously worked its way to my
leader. A trout, with a taste for antiques,
took that treacherous relic and, just as I was
about to fling him out upon the beach, the
snell broke. He swam off groggily and then
sank to the bottom, weary and worn, to
get his wind. I presume that obese trout
are short of breath. In that pellucid water
we watched him and yearned for him. The
[551
At the Knee of Michael
Camp Boss, attracted by the execrations
and cries of anguish, came up and inaugu-
rated a systematic course to salvage that
trout. He put a sinker on his line and
bumped that exhausted fish on the nose until
he had a fly underneath him. Then he lifted
smartly and behold! The trout was hooked
and brought unresisting to his doom!
A loon led us into Pappoose Bay that same
afternoon, a loon that had been to the grocery
and was hastening home, purchase-laden, to
her hungry brood. In shape and compara-
tive size Pappoose Bay is a sort of third-floor-
suite arrangement with reference to Squaw
Harbor; a chamber for guests of, perhaps,
the second magnitude. There are, too, the
beach, the unrippled lagoon, the screen of
living-green between it and morose Superior
— and the trout, lurking in crystalline depths.
We found an Indian camp in the bushes near
by Pappoose Bay. Two things told us it was
an Indian camp — the tepee-poles and its
location in the bushes, where no human but
[56]
Lo, the Poor Indian
an Indian could for an hour live in sanity
with black-flies.
That there is a decided intellectual move-
ment— upward or downward — among the
Indian indigenous to Pappoose Bay we found
undeniable evidence. It was the fragment
of a dime-novel, most virulent and lurid —
done in English. Even the author of such
turgid fiction must have a torpid conscience
and I will not crush him entirely by giving
his name and infamy to the world. The
incident, however, offers a nice conjectural
point for discussion — whether literature is
regenerating or debauching the fairly "no-
ble red man." Billy wondered what "the
six best sellers" in Pappoose Bay were,
anyway.
In the basin of Pappoose Bay Mac had a
curious experience with a trout. I find it
entered with minute detail and quite breath-
less gusto in the Log of that year, because
it impressed me then as an incident that
added a brand new chapter to ichthyological
[57]
At the Knee of Michael
researches. Since then the phenomenon has
been repeated at least three times and I have
lost the hectic flush of the discovery. A
trout took Mac's tail-fly, a little Brown
Hackle, rather frayed and faded, took it
away with him, in fact, as if for closer scru-
tiny at his leisure. Mac was, of course,
disconsolate. The trout grew in length and
weight and beam as Mac detailed the outrage
to each sympathetic member of the party in
turn, until that trout, in making off with his
loot, really raised a swell that inundated
beach and launch like a tidal-wave. To take
his mind from such depressing retrospection,
Mac was urged to cast again with the hope
of avenging the insult; perhaps upon the
culprit's brother or some other blood relation.
On the second cast, Mac got a rise and
hooked his fish. With surprisingly little
exertion he netted his fish and found his
abducted Brown Hackle coquettishly deco-
rating that gourmand's jaw. Clearly, then,
if fish have even an elementary nervous
[58]
Adorable Frailties
system, they do not permit it to interfere
with their appetites.
When the Camp Boss looked significantly
at his watch, it was six o'clock and we were
nearly ten miles from camp. That is, the
Camp Boss subsequently deduced that it
was six o'clock. That watch of the Camp
Boss's was a fecund source of discussion,
admiration, and fatuous entertainment for
four consecutive years on the North Shore.
It was, I think, the only watch I ever knew
that really possessed and demonstrated, with
the slightest encouragement, a temperament.
When the Camp Boss essayed to tell the
time by that sullen and volatile computator,
he followed always the same impressive
ceremony. First, he looked at it searchingly,
half distrustfully, rather reproachfully. Then
he rapped it smartly three times in quick
succession upon a friendly rock or tree or
cylinder of the engine. Hurriedly, then?
he 'd get the general trend of time by re-
calling the events of the day in chronological
[59l
At the Knee of Michael
order; look searchingly at the sun, if there
were any; produce a pencil and paper; make
a rapid but surprisingly accurate calcula-
tion, and announce the time with a ring of
well-repressed triumph that always quite
swept us off our feet in a tumult of applause.
" Mathematics taught in camp" or " Wenley's
Wonder- Working Watch, a stimulus and
absorbing game for slow-witted campers!"
I Ve often marvelled why the sporting-goods
men and their catalogues have n't commer-
cialized that temperamental watch of the
Camp Boss.
Anyhow, it was six o'clock. We stopped
neither at the reefs nor the little rivers but
dashed straight for camp. Even a tiny thing
such as the Wagush and her draught of
scarcely sixteen inches must look searchingly
ahead in those treacherous waters. There
are buried reefs and needle-pointed rocks
everywhere and in the most unexpected
places. Once, when at least two miles off
shore, opposite Heron Bay, cruising in a
[60]
Michael's Fire Guides
dory that drew eighteen inches of water, we
struck one of these church-spires stretching
up, perhaps, three hundred feet from the
lake-floor. So fast were we travelling, that
we fairly hurdled it and stove through one-
inch planking a hole, which we were able
to plug.
Night was closing in as the Wagush sped
to Duncan's Cove. Superior was "thick-
ening up." The sun being obscured by
clouds and lake-mist, it suddenly grew un-
believably cold. A choppy sea, too, was
running, we found when we shot out of the
shelter of the last toy-archipelago and struck
straight across the considerable bay that
joins Superior and Duncan's Cove. The
ice-cold spray deluged and chilled us. But
swinging about the last gray point in the
shadow of great cliffs hurling green waves
and eternal defiance back to the warring
lake, we saw the glare of Michael's huge
camp-fire, lighting up the whole rocky alcove;
it illumined our course and suffused our
At the Knee of Michael
hearts with a gentle glow. "Nosie" ex-
tended a welcome as ecstatic as cramped legs
would permit and reclaimed his gods, caprices,
disloyalty, and all. There was warm cloth-
ing to be donned nimbly. There was a flask
of "family size." There was the crackling
fire of pine and fat-birch. There were
Michael and Joe's dinner-preparations sus-
pended at the very denouement for the
coming of the masters — and the coming of
the trout. We dined in the fire's glow.
We led Gepe away from the table (it was
a table, too; resourceful Joe had fashioned
it from two pine boards cast up by the seas
to bleach to snowy whiteness). To be
accurate, we carried Gepe from the table.
Not that his incredible capacity menaced
the commissary, but we cared for Gepe;
cared for him much more deeply than we
cared for the imminent probability of a
hopelessly foundered tenderfoot on our hands.
One must remember that in the first days
in the wilderness. The exposure, the physical
[62]
Post-Prandial Prowess
exertion, the tonic of air and sun bring the
commensurate appetite to restore the nerves
and muscles and tissues before the digestive
organs have time to prepare themselves for
the new and extraordinary demands made
upon them. The temptation to overeat is
strong. The penalties are immediate and
severe. Many a glorious vacation has been
nipped in the bud by this indiscretion.
In the delicious reaction that, in the wil-
derness, comes ever with a full stomach and
an emptied briar pipe, energy and ambition
hand-in-hand returned to Billy and Gepe.
They dared each other to deeds of agility,
strength, and daring. After an exhaustive
exchange of slurs and invidious comparisons,
they repaired to the beach, there together
to join the issue and carry to the fire the
sturdiest timber that Superior had tossed
upon a heaving billow. There were much
grunting and muttered recrimination in the
darkness. They worked for a while with
taunts and maledictions upon the opposite
[63]
At the Knee of Michael
ends of two distinct timbers, so deeply em-
bedded in the sand that a fish-tug could
not have budged them. Having discovered
this discrepancy and focused their efforts
upon the same log, they returned with re-
newed enthusiasm to mutual accusations,
and, at last, came back to the fire empty-
handed, each full of descriptive adjectives
for the treachery and physical subnormality
of the other. Joe witnessed that thrilling
duel of well-trained vocabularies and a few
minutes later, grinning broadly but with
never a word, he brought that timber along
with four larger ones to the fire in a single
armful.
Michael came out of the shadows when
Joe had handed his quietus to our comedians
and asked how we should like to have boiled
trout on the morrow. Michael often lays
neat little ambushes, more insidious and
deadly than the more sanguinary ones of his
forebears. I thought I scented one here.
We told Michael that the suggestion of a
[64]
Boiling in Birchbark?
boiled trout filled us with poetic longing,
but not having carried an iron pot 300 miles
with us, and the local hardware stores un-
questionably being closed for the night, we
guessed we 'd have to starve on fried trout
for a while. " No, " said Michael indulgently.
"No iron pot. I make pot to boil trout with
birchbark."
That was frankly side-splitting. Michael's
whimsical humor had betrayed itself at
last! The spectacle of a trout simmering
over a fire in a pot of birchbark, which for
inflammability is a substantial improvement
upon gasoline-soaked tinder, was too mirth-
provoking. We laughed heartily at Michael,
who did n't laugh — just smiled Michael's
very gentle and sweet old smile.
The next morning Michael appeared with
a birchbark pot. It was unquestionably
water-tight and most ingeniously made.
A very workmanly job. It had two neat
little compartments. But how make it fire-
proof? We stopped smiling and exchanging
s [65]
At the Knee of Michael
clever comments. Michael first showed that
water could circulate between the two com-
partments. Then he half-filled them. He
put the trout, a good three-pounder, in one
compartment. With two sticks he deftly
took a stone from the ashes of the fire, white
hot. Very, very slowly he immersed the
stone in the water of the other birchbark
compartment. When the stone was sub-
merged, the water and the trout were boiling
in the adjacent compartment. Thus we
lunched upon boiled trout, boiled in a pot
unscathed by fire. Since that demonstra-
tion of primitive culinary resource there have
arisen many, many occasions where Michael
has had the last, satisfying laugh and has
always, too, laughed with an abandon and
lightness of heart remarkable in the stoi-
cal red man. It was at Michael's knee in
the warm shelter of Duncan's Cove that
we learned first to toddle in the northern
wilderness.
[66]
CHAPTER IV
EXPLORING THE HEADWATERS OF THE STEEL
RIVER AND BILLY FRASER'S ANECDOTES
ALAS, the poor Nepigon! Whence have
fled the sacred silences and sanctity
of the wilderness? You dress for dinner now
in the roar of the rapids and drop off to see
a lawn-f£te or a polo-game while your packers
are taking your outfit over the portage. At
least, the modern Nepigon is almost as bad
as that. The bustle and thrift and concourse
that come with judicious advertising and
continuous exaggeration have entered in.
Every angler, before qualifying, must do the
Nepigon, precisely as the young pianist
traditionally must have a whirl with The
Moonlight Sonata, or the budding man of
letters flounder in the "symbolism of Maeter-
linck." Twice we have tried the Nepigon.
[67]
The Steel River
Once we went the forty miles, nearly to Lake
Nepigon, blithely crowding the portages with
fellow "tourists" (hated term) and bumping
canoes as continuously as if it were a park-
lagoon on ' ' band-concert night. ' ' The second
time we brawled with the drunken Indians
of the guides' union for two days and gave
it up when the head guide, sullenly drunk,
insisted upon inventorying our commissary
to assure himself that delicacies were forth-
coming worthy of his station and epicurean
tastes. The Nepigon has been popularized
and commercialized. Either is desolation
and both mean death. It is paying the
dread penalty of literary distinction.
I mention these unpleasant aspects of the
new Nepigon simply to show that we were
literally driven to the Steel River. And
for this circumstance we have always been
extravagantly grateful to the plethora of
pestiferous tourists and the convivial guides
of the Nepigon.
To us the Steel first proffered the need-
[68]
Not Tourist-Trodden Yet
ful hospitality of the "overflow meeting."
Thereafter, it was three weeks of paradise,
and then eleven months of pining and antici-
pation. I will not tell you where it was.
That were unethical — and unnecessary. It
is marvellous, is the Steel River. It is a
Nepigon reduced about one third and, scen-
ically, wilder and more gorgeous. Five
miles from its cunningly concealed mouth
there is a natural harbor, Jack Fish Bay,
and in the harbor there is a coaling station of
the Canadian Pacific Railroad. Perhaps a
half dozen parties a year ascend the Steel,
but only to Mountain Lake, ten miles from
Lake Superior. Thirty miles beyond that
it begins its mad scrambling and tumbling
down from the highlands, through canyons
and caverns, over falls of forty feet and rapids
of chaos — and that is thirty miles of true
wilderness — and virgin fishing.
We had been out for two weeks, in thirty-
foot power-dory Wagush, and tow-boat, when,
as night was closing in, with a southwest
[69]
The Steel River
blow coming on, too, we swung around the
last rocky promontory and romped into
Jack Fish Bay.
Bill Fraser was waiting for us and had
been waiting for us with canoes and grub
and packers and waning enthusiasm for a
week. Bill Fraser keeps a hotel, the hotel,
at Jack Fish. I have always suspected that
Bill Fraser keeps the hotel simply to afford
prodigal hospitality to every brother fisher-
man and insure himself an audience for his
shooting and fishing narratives. Hotel and
narratives are good. Bill himself weighs
1 60 pounds and can carry 200 pounds over
the portages without interrupting his remin-
iscence.
We were off at sunrise. That is, we stag-
gered from our beds at sunrise with assur-
ance of starting up the river immediately.
First an all-essential "tunk-strap," for pack-
ing, was missing and Bill Fraser found that
Bill, Jr., had been using it for reins. Then
a setter-pup showed symptoms of distemper
[70]
Frontier Pastimes
and whined for sulphur, and a fish-tug came
in to coal, and the sweet-faced old lady of
Jack Fish's one store must be routed out
to sell us bacon and bread.
Bill Fraser has a team and wagon on the
first portage, which is exceedingly good, be-
cause the portage is four miles long. How-
ever, the manner of getting team and wagon
from Bill's stable to the beginning of the
portage is "quite a chore," a hair-raising,
nerve-shattering sort of a " chore . " A granite
ridge, impassable save to mountain-sheep,
drops down to Lake Superior. The track
of the Canadian Pacific is the only highway
Bill's team knows. Walls of rock hedge in
that track. There is no hope and no room
for side-stepping. Bill hitches up, reduces
his wagon-load to greatest sprinting-efficiency,
takes a look at the time-table of regular
trains, and with a whoop starts up the railroad
track on his mile dash. The meeting-up
with a way-freight or belated transcontinental
would mean a contretemps which Bill has
The Steel River
now for twenty years contemplated with a
grin. He has come to enjoy the sport of
outguessing the Canadian Pacific.
We walked — and walked well in the rear —
out of range of flying fragments. The tearq,
had scarcely slipped off the ties, down OIP,
the trail, when a freight whizzed by. The
engineer shook his fist at Bill Fraser as if
promising himself better luck next time.
They 're grim humorists — these frontiersmen.
When we saw a dainty little Peterboro
canoe and Bill's preparation to pack it on
the wagon, we asked Bill frankly, perhaps
sharply, if he purposed taking four men and
about five hundred pounds of duffel and grub
over forty miles of swift water in that cute
little desk-ornament. Quickly we saw we had
hurt Bill's feelings and pride. The portage
problem he had solved long ago with the
swift, strong sweep of the pioneer. That
canoe was for the first lake only. There was
another for the second lake and the two big
roomy, rangey Peterboros waited at the
[72]
Paddling across a Mirror
end of the second lake for the up-river
trip.
Bill Fraser sitting astride the bottom of
that canoe, a-top the wagon, careening over
boulders, down gulches, and through thickets,
gave an exhibition of boatmanship as thrilling
as I ever saw. At the first stop we found
the syrup loose in Jim's flannels and the
quinine pills in the butter-jar.
Rough as it is, that country of the first
four-mile portage is as beautiful as a city
park. The trees are the exquisite white-
birch with an occasional spruce or balsam
for purely decorative purposes. We made
Clear Water Lake in an hour and then in
canoe loaded to the gun'ale, on both trips, we
were off across a mirror-like sheet of water,
perhaps a mile and a half wide. We went
silently — at Bill Fraser's suggestion — and
we were rewarded. A splash — carried miles
in the sylvan silence — warned us that we
were not quite alone. Then a prodigious
splashing — and we saw, a half-mile away,
[73]
The Steel River
a huge bull moose race out of lily-pads and
disappear in the forest as silent as a wraith.
There was no luxury of revery and polite
discussion on that second portage. Bill
said it was "about a mile and a quarter."
But there was no wagon. That made a
difference. Each and every man had to
carry. Bill himself took a canoe, a couple
of blanket-rolls, and the cooking utensils.
He was really quite mortified when we pointed
out the fact that his left ear carried no burden,
and would have corrected the oversight, had
we said the word. A "tunk-strap" is a
vital and docile agency of transportation,
if you know how to use it, to put it across
your brow to steady the load which is balanced
cunningly upon your back, leaving the hands
free for burdens or tumbles. Jim watched
Bill Fraser load up and said it was all ab-
surdly simple. He insisted upon galloping
off into the greenwood with a neat little
2OO-pound pack and was really quite peevish
when we pruned him down to sixty. First
[74]
Over-Zeal and Over-Sights
he began sprinkling cans of bacon and cups
and other people's wardrobes and bottles
of household remedies along the trail. It
made trailing Jim an exciting sport and an
exact science, but it was taking too much
time for salvage. We secured his pack for
him and heard him ask himself "how much
longer the portage" was. Successively
the "tunk-strap" dropped to his eyes, nose,
mouth, and finally to his Adam's-apple, which
shut off his wind and forced another in-
terruption of the whole procession. When
Jim staggered to the final opening on Moun-
tain Lake he was carrying a frying-pan and a
fishing-rod and his proud spirit and breath
were entirely gone.
We struck Mountain Lake in a marsh. I '11
never quite forgive Mountain Lake for that.
It was showing itself at such needless and
unfair disadvantage. I think that is the
only marsh on Mountain Lake and we had
to flounder in the ooze and silt to load the
canoes. Perhaps Mountain Lake was merely
[75]
The Steel River
showing sound theatrical sense in delaying
the dramatic disclosure of the splendors to
come. Around the first bend it burst upon
us — and stunned us. Lakes George and
Placid, what perfunctory millponds in your
smug exquisiteness you are compared to this
rugged goddess of the wilds — Mountain Lake!
An ellipse of lapis-lazuli is Mountain Lake,
wonderfully blue when the sun sparkles and
buried deeply in a wonderful setting of moun-
tains. Such mountains ! In some places the
ascent is gradual, up heavily wooded slopes.
In other places blood-red precipices rise sheer
from the water. One mountain has split.
Half has tumbled into the lake and the wall
that remains outlines a giant, sinister Indian
profile. Our Indian Joe contemplated it
with visible awe. After all, the real red man
is still worshipping his gods in the forest, the
rocks, the winds, and the heavens.
There can be troublesome seas for a canoe
on Mountain Lake. It is nine miles long
and averages, perhaps, a mile and a half
[76]
"The Tragic Isolation of that Lighthouse!"
De Profundis
in width. The wind was rising, and a
head-wind, before we had paddled the two
overladen canoes a mile.
Relieved from his "spell" of paddling, the
Camp Boss, never for a moment idle in the
all-too-short play-day, rigged up a trolling-
line and a spinning-spoon and dropped it
into the blue waters in the canoe's wake.
The Camp Boss, as I recall, was pointing
to a gaunt dead pine that stood sentinel alone
and desolate on a far mountain- top, when
he gave a muttered exclamation and threat-
ened to go backward out of the canoe. In-
stinctively, though, he jerked and set the
hook — in something. It was quite something,
too. In a few minutes it was a conjectural
point whether the something was going to
tow the canoe and three men back to the
portage or the canoe tow the something to the
camping-place.
When the Camp Boss by exercise of sheer
biceps had hauled in, hand-over-hand, about
thirty feet of line, the something broke water
[77]
The Steel River
desperately and shook its imprisoned gill
in the air and we saw that the Camp Boss
had a husky namaycush of about five
pounds.
It is about two and a half miles from the
portage-entry to Mountain Lake to the
point where the lower Steel rushes out of it
Superior- ward. There we beached the canoes,
climbed the high bank to a clearing, made by
Bill Fraser for the purpose, and made camp
in the roar of the falls. As we came ashore
we saw trout — heavens such trout — leaping
for flies in the oil-smooth water at the jaws
of the rapids.
Camp-making was hurried and perfunc-
tory, I confess. We slapped up three tents
on poles, which had offered other parties
the same excellent service. We left Indian
Joe to cut balsam for our beds, and Camp
Cook Arthur to rig up his tripod and dig
bacon and bread and coffee from the chaos of
Bill Eraser's portaging. We drew rods from
cases with palsied fingers, wet leader-boxes,
[78]
An Occasional Swirling Pool
and brought forth great gaudy flies, which
Bill Fraser immediately and sternly re-
jected. He made us take staid Montreals,
brown and black Hackles, demure Jenny
Linds, with an infrequent Parmachenee Belle
for contrast. We divided. Bill Fraser took
Jim and the Camp Boss down the rapids
to the "Stretch," a rioting mill-race with
an occasional swirling pool in it.
Marv. and Bill and I went to the point
where Mountain -Lake first begins to rip-
ple and murmur in the clutch of the falls,
/he first cast brought an answering gleam
of a silvery, sinewy little body. Then the
"strike" and the thrill that runs along the
line from a hook well "set." Bill has one.
Marv.'s shout of congratulation is choked
by troubles of his own. There is no aux-
iliary hand to man the landing-net. Three
men stand side by side upon the rocks and
simultaneously play three fish — four fish, as a
matter of fact; Bill had a double. We called
it off when we had killed enough for the camp-
[79]
The Steel River
dinner and enough for the camp-breakfast,
however the Camp Boss and Jim and Bill
Fraser might be faring down the "Stretch"
— for we had found the place of monster-
trout and many days very golden were ahead
of us.
The sun was dropping behind the moun-
tains and Mountain Lake was a mirror of
bewildering splendors when Cook Art. an-
nounced the trout and coffee and fried po-
tatoes ready for the table. The Camp Boss
and Jim and Bill Fraser had not come. Bill
— who by the way was distinguished from
Bill Fraser as Exotic Bill, while the latter
was characterized as Indigenous Bill — vol-
unteered to go down the trail and "hurry
'em up." As Exotic Bill had never seen
the trail before, I had my doubts as to the
efficacy of the hurrying-up. But Bill went.
He had been gone about ten minutes, when
Camp Boss and Jim and Indigenous Bill
came in — by a "short-cut." Then Jim
volunteered to find Bill. He had been gone
[80]
Somebody's Birthday
about fifteen minutes when Bill came back
quite apprehensive for the safety of the
Camp Boss, Jim, and Bill Fraser. Meanwhile
the trout were blackening and charring
nicely and night was dropping gingerly as
the north-night does drop. "You all sit on
this here one," said Bill Fraser firmly,
indicating Exotic Bill, "and I '11 go and snare
the other. Hide-and-seek's good fun, except
when you ain't had nothing to eat since
sun-up." And Jim, explaining garrulously,
was led in by the hand when there was little
left of ten pounds of trout — but the aroma.
It was somebody's birthday that night in
camp. Almost anybody would agree to
have a birthday on Mountain Lake. The
idea, I think, was suggested by Cook Art.'s
discovery of a bottle of Scotch in the potato-
sack. Nobody knew how it got there, and
Bill Fraser who had carried that sack over
the portage was ominously eager to find out
how it got there. However, Bill Fraser has
the ready adaptability and forgiveness of
[81]
The Steel River
the wilderness. Marv. was quite positive
that it was his birthday. We gathered
tin cups and spring-water and stood about
the fire, conscious that it was an impressive
and ceremonious sort of a tableau vivant.
Bill Fraser insisted that each one "fill up"
before he poured his own libation. We were
all impressed with this pretty courtesy on
Bill Eraser's part, the wilderness host, and
respected his wishes. We expected a toast
of unusual feeling and eloquence, or some-
thing like that. "All got a drink? "asked
Bill Fraser, glancing around the expectant
group. "All right — just a minute," and
Indigenous Bill beamingly took at a gulp
what was left in the bottle, about three
hands high, I should think.
Bill Fraser explained afterward that that
was what he always did when he "got wet
and didn't have no extry clothes along for
a change."
Exotic Bill and Jim retired to their tent,
promising each other to rise with the sun.
[82]
"Jim Talked Little at the Camp-Fire that Night."
The Day after the Banquet
One was to "take a canoe and explore the
lake before breakfast" and the other planned
delightedly to spring all-rosy from his
slumbers and "dive off the rocks."
At seven A.M., after ten minutes of riot
and rough-house, we succeeded in hauling
them from their balsam-beds.
A surprising and exasperating condition
confronted us when the next morning we
advanced upon falls, rapids, and pools of the
Steel. The water had been abnormally high
for days. Indigenous Bill had noticed and
pointed it out and feared for the result.
However, the voraciousness of the trout
the night before had quieted Bill's fears.
But now in the morning the thing had hap-
pened. The high water had brought down
flies and grubs in myriads from the uplands.
The trout had fed their fill. That was what
they were doing last night. Now they were
gorged. We were chagrined and hurt. In-
digenous Bill was profane. We tried flies
sober enough to appeal to the most ascetic
[83]
The Steel River
of trout and flies gaudy and giddy enough
to delight the most frivolous trout in the
whole democracy of the Steel. Nothing
whatever doing. I fell a victim to despair.
I waded out, waist deep, to a rock in the
centre of a pool, with the maelstrom about
me, and deliberately and shamelessly cast
with a "spinner." The Camp Boss shouted
fisherman's ethics and morals and epithets
and curses from the bank — while I caught
three inquisitive, betrayed trout for luncheon.
I submit that the most ethical and punctil-
ious of fishermen must eat. In the afternoon
we teased, cajoled, insinuated, and bullied
enough trout out of the water for dinner.
And, be it to the everlasting glory of fisher-
manly ethics and morals and methods, it
was the Camp Boss who did it. He would
locate a trout and bombard him with casts,
with an infinitude of flies and angles and
subtle invitations, until the trout in utter
exasperation would rush at the tangible
evidence of his mysterious tormentor and
[84]
PQ
a
Mere Man
hang himself. The rest of the camp would
play draw-poker with pine-cones for an hour
or so and then come back and cheer the
Camp Boss.
The next morning we were ready for less
epicurean trout and the upper waters of
this wild river. We cached everything we
should n't need for five days. We had to
tear Jim's waders and bath-gown out of his
hands by force. He even promised to wear
them over the portages, if necessary. But we
had seen Jim on a portage. Pretty nearly
due north we paddled for four miles beneath
frowning precipices, amid the oppressive si-
lence of that grandeur which seems not at
all to care for the presence and applause
of the puniest thing in the wilderness — to
wit, mere man.
Then the mouth of the upper Steel opened
out suddenly. It looks much like the mouth
at Lake Superior, sand and pebbles on both
banks. Evidently it overflows its banks
mightily in the spring and great deluges,
[85]
The Steel River
carrying logs and brush, come roaring down,
for the trees keep their distance respectfully
fifty feet from the water's edge.
As we paddled up, a caribou lifted a
dripping nose from the water and dashed
away silently into the dense cover. There
is surprisingly little current here and, even
with canoes laden with seven men and much
grub, we swept along rapidly.
A stupid partridge stood upon a log and
stared at us in sheer bewilderment that was
quite irresistible. She went into the pot
that night.
There are two portages to make, both
around log-jams, one of a mile and a half
and the other of a half-mile. Jim was un-
expectedly temperate and unambitious.
Again the delight of the camp. We had
all paddled and carried and waded that day.
The roar of the upper falls smote our ex-
pectant ears after scarcely two hours' paddling
next morning. Lakes, many lakes, there are
beyond. And many fish, mighty fish. I
[86]
I
Down Smiling Waters
say seven-pounders firmly and with an honest
thrill of achievement and proof of photo-
graphic record. Below we came upon huge
rainbow trout or "hammerheads, " which, I
believe, never get above the first falls.
We were at the headwaters of one of
Superior's mightiest rivers and the least
known and wildest of them all. There is a
thrill, perhaps a vainglorious and theatric
sort of a thrill, in the realization that you
are standing where no man, save the original
owner, the Indian, has ever stood before.
We were far from and high above Lake Su-
perior and there were ahead of us the leisurely
drift down smiling waters and two weeks in
which to fish, laugh, dream, and drink the
delights of the wilderness proffered in brim-
ming measure only to him who, clean and
light of heart, seeks them.
After all, it is much as Exotic Bill said of
it: — "Journeys end in the achievement's
greeting."
[87]
CHAPTER V
A GOOD deal like Sinbad carrying the
Old Man of the Sea did the ambitious
little steamer Caribou look when she got
our Wagush II aboard. Generations of
Gloucester fishermen had demonstrated the
amazing sea-worth of Wagush II. She was
twenty-eight feet long, pointed of nose, high of
freeboard, and duck-like in buoyancy. Her
twelve horse-power gasoline-engine gave her
the strength of her convictions and a sixteen-
foot Mackinaw tow-boat served to repress her
youthful enthusiasm.
The shark-nose of Wagush II protruded
from the starboard gangway of the Caribou
and four feet of stern dangled dizzily out
of the port gangway.
[88]
Superior Smiled
A captain with misgivings and a crew with
rich lake-oaths had blocked her in. Thus
burdened, the Caribou had staggered all day
and all night northward, along the east
shore of Lake Superior. And Superior smiled
all day and all night, which was good, be-
cause had Superior frowned or bristled up
or raged, Wagush II must have slid nose-
first or propeller-first into the depths and
gone to the reefs crewless and alone.
Through the starlit night the captain and
we watched anxiously for clouds, for the
swift, sudden winds that herald a tantrum
of that capricious inland goddess. Dawn
came and the smile of saturnine Superior
broadened into a laugh.
Day broke as we steamed through the
gaunt portal-rocks of the harbor on Michi-
pocoten Island. We were 130 miles north
of Sault de Sainte Marie, at the granite heart
of the land of vacation-dreams.
Alexander Henry, Esq., hardy and nervy
old explorer, visited Michipocoten Island in
[89]
"No Landing for Boats"
1769 and, in his book, he leaves a quaint
record of his impressions. It was then
Isle de Maurepas. The Indians shunned it
for the soundly satisfying reason that they
thought it peopled with huge snakes. Sands
of gold were said to be upon its shores, hence,
too, the "Island of Yellow Sands," and
once, when Indians had filled their canoe
with gold, a great Savage Spirit rushed out
upon them, and waded fathoms-deep in
pursuit, until they threw their booty into
the water. Alexander Henry, Esq., himself
seemed half to believe it.
If it had seemed a tussle to load Wagush II
aboard at Sault de Sainte Marie with all
the appurtenances of freight-handling, it now
proved the merest romp contrasted to the
work of unloading Wagush II on the fish-dock
at Michipocoten Island. First, we found
the dock too low and we built it up. Then
we found the wall of the freight-house too
high and we knocked it down. We had
toted that dory too many hundreds of miles
[90]
Wagush II Hauled us along 320 Miles of Superior's
Shore-Line. "
North along the Shore
to stop at anything so trivial as demolishing
a warehouse.
We conscripted the Caribou's crew and the
fishing-crew and the two cooks and a chamber-
maid and all the able-bodied passengers.
The launch of a real "Dreadnought" could
have been attended with popular elation no
more vociferous and genuine. We were
"going north" — along the shore — whither
the wind listed, where the fishing was good.
That was all we said — because that was all
we knew — and wanted to know. We had
tackle, flies, grub, gasoline, a month of
liberty, and Superior was smiling. The man
who would ask for more belongs not in the
wilderness. We were off amid cargoes of
nondescript duffel — and cheers.
Usually, in a tale so fragmentary, the
personnel brings neither distinction nor clar-
ity; generally naught but contradictions
and remorse for the author. But the per-
sonnel cannot honestly be dodged here.
The Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
[91]
"No Landing for Boats "
nology gave us our " chief -engineer, " Marv.,
a father-confessor of frail gasoline-engines.
The Camp Boss, of course, manned the
wheel. Navigating-officer, sage of the men-
dacious charts, was Bill. Second-engineer
unanimously went to Jim, maker of auto-
mobiles and debonair in overalls. Keeper
of the Log, camera, scientific data, and other
men's consciences was I and I rode in the
dory, at that. In the tow-boat was our red
brother of the wilderness for now these many
years, Joe Cadotte, Chippewa gentleman,
very gentle; and, with him, Art., the camp
cookee, and gallons of gasoline and huge
tumuli of "eats."
The harbor cuts into the south side of
Michipocoten Island, at about its middle,
and the island is, approximately, fifteen miles
long and eight miles wide. But we must go
due north to strike the main shore of Superior
and a semi-circumnavigation was the only
way. Still the great lake smiled. Skirting,
just missing the treacherous reefs, the south,
[92]
A Dash for Shelter
east, and, then, north shores of Michipocoten
Island, we made the twenty-four miles and
went ashore for lunch at noon. And we were
"invited out to lunch," too. At the harbor,
as we started, two mining engineers had come
to us and asked us for a "lift." They had
walked across the island the day before for
their mail — think if that mail had proved to
be bills and advertisements! And one had
wrenched his ankle on the rough trail. They
were diamond-drilling for copper — and they
subsequently struck it, too, we heard. For
the transportation they entertained us lav-
ishly. We got to know these two lonely
men intimately in a half-day, and then — the
way of those wilderness-meetings and friend-
ships— we waved them farewell, in all human
probability never to see them again.
We had serious things to do and lots of
them, to wit — make that eleven-mile dash
across the strip of Lake Superior that sep-
arated us from the main shore and make it,
while Superior still smiled, in time to find
[93]
"No Landing for Boats"
shelter and make our first camp for the night.
The prospectors directed us to head due
north and run into Pilot Harbor, the nearest
hospitable point on the rocky main shore.
We bowled along on the long, oily swell,
for about five miles. Wagush's two cylin-
ders sang a tuneful rhythm. Joe steered
the tow-boat and Cookee Art. delved into
sacks and boxes and inventoried the culinary
equipment with which for four weeks he
must meet the corporeal needs of six chron-
ically ravenous men.
Then, as though a gray mantle of oblivion
had been dropped over the landscape, the
fog-banks blew in from Lake Superior and
blotted out the shore before and behind us.
True, we had the compass and the course
was unmistakable — due north. But it was
all like sailing for eternity upon the air. The
needle held straight, but we seemed to be
swinging somehow always to port. Visions of
sailing out into Lake Superior with land and
safety so close but screened from us oppressed
[94]
A Swallow and a Surprise
us. It seemed too long. We should have
made eleven miles straightaway before this.
It was unpleasant — very — and vacation-
exuberance for fifteen minutes, there, went
ebbing.
The Camp Boss saw a swallow in the
vapor about us. Then suddenly the whole
North Shore, great ridges, towering rocks,
spruces and pines and birches sprang out
upon us with a gaunt sentinel-rock dead-
ahead and scarcely fifty feet away. Marv.
jumped to the throttle. Wagush II checked,
stopped, and backed out of the ambush and
we reconnoitred. We had the North Shore,
anyway, and it was a good thing to hang
onto. As the navigating officer said, it
was "no time to play hunches in that fog."
If Pilot Harbor had any sense of fitness, it
should be in "the heart of the business dis-
trict" somewhere and the only discreet way
to find it was to tiptoe along the coast,
feeling it out inch by inch until we should
find Pilot Harbor. When Wagush pulled
[951
"No Landing for Boats"
her nose out of destruction, Joe's boat came
up indignantly and bumped us, but it merely
up-ended Cookee Art. who had his head in
the bread-tin at the moment.
It was a debatable point whether Pilot
Harbor was to the right or to the left. We
could n't separate. In that fog we 'd never
get together again. We turned to the left —
a good, sporty guess — and ran under a check.
We were certainly going through an opening
— maybe only a bay. No — we were leaving
the lake, all right. Then an opening within
an opening and a sharp turn to the right.
There wasn't a ripple on the water here.
"Aren't we going into a harbor?" asked
Second-Engineer Jim.
"We're going into something," said the
Camp Boss, peering ahead, at the wheel.
"I can't tell whether it's a harbor or a
linen-closet." Another turn and then a
sand-beach! Never a sand-beach without a
harbor — and we knew it! We had blundered
straight into Pilot Harbor. What perils
[96]
Pilot Harbor Very Good
can a mere fog hold for a launch so rich in
fool's luck as that?
There isn't much in Pilot Harbor but
shelter and a little of that is a great comfort
when you 're coasting Lake Superior. The
making of the first camp and the cooking
of the first camp-meal always bring a series
of panics. " There's no bacon" or "They
left out the bread" or "We can't find the
kerosene for the lanterns." And in the
end they all miraculously appear. Of course
something is always forgotten, but generally
it is Jim's hair-tonic or Billy's hot-water
bottle suggested by a too-doting wife. While
we napped that night, Superior quit smiling
and tried to blow the tops off the everlasting
hills and Pilot Harbor felt very good.
The next morning the Great Spirit, Nan-i-
bou-jou, again enveloped us in fog to stay
our departure. But as Superior was pond-
like we packed up, and again, under check,
felt our way along. We kept just the tree-
tops in view and snooped cautiously in and
7 [971
"No Landing for Boats"
out of bays, until we almost ran into the
open door of a cook-shanty. This time we
had bumped into a pulp- wood camp. There 's
a good river there, too, the Pukasaw, or
Puckoso. The maps are so diffident about
their spelling! Twenty-foot falls there take
their last tumble into Lake Superior. While
Joe and the Cookee made camp, we took a
fisherman's look at some likely-looking rocks
at the river mouth. We killed enough fish
for dinner in fifteen minutes and as many
more got away with our leaders. In reef
fishing on Lake Superior there is no telling
when one may cast his lines in pleasant
places or a colony of whales.
The making and breaking of two camps
had already brought us considerable tech-
nique. We worked in crews and worked
rapidly until it came to the necessity of
unpacking a whole huge bed-roll to find
Jim's watch which he had left in his blankets.
That 's where Jim always left his watch. It
became a permanent and sacred institution
[98!
A Smart Wind
and on camp-breaking mornings Bill's first
camp-task was to take Jim's watch out of
Jim's blankets and tie it around Jim's neck
in a double bowline knot. Our best camp-
breaking record, I find in the Log, was
twenty- two minutes from flapjacks to full-
speed-ahead and that was the ripest achieve-
ment of three weeks' training.
. Superior was again smiling and unbefogged
when we put out of the Puckoso that morning.
The black-flies had only just heard that
succulent tenderfeet were theirs for the
stinging and they chased us half a mile out
in the lake. We had picked White Spruce
River for the next night-camp, but we decided
not to stop; rather, Superior decided that
for us. A smart wind from the southwest
brought a smarter sea along with it. Wagush
was game for it and equal to it. But Joe's
heavily loaded tow-boat was not, particularly
the way the Wagush was jerking her through
the seas. Richardson's Harbor loomed up
opportunely. Joe, with the water to his
[991
"No Landing for Boats"
ankles, sighted it first and vigorously urged
a landing party. If you can mentally picture
a giant T cut into the solid rock of the shore-
line, you can mentally picture Richardson's
Harbor. When we found the harbor-mouth
the seas playfully boosted us in. We coasted
around this unruffled refuge. A deserted
fishing-station was the only blemish on
the scene and jumping herring gave us a
sensation until we found them herring.
While we lunched and smoked and found
moose-tracks, Superior thought we had es-
caped her and sullenly subsided. So we
looked out of the harbor-mouth cautiously
and made a dash for it.
Otter Head is precisely what the pioneer,
in his keen observation and nature-lore,
saw fit to call it — the head of a huge otter.
You can see it for fifty miles on a clear day.
We did. That is, Joe did. Joe is always
seeing and hearing things first and then we
pretend that we do — until we really do.
Then the lighthouse — the tragic isolation of
[ioo]
Laughing down Gloomy Canyons
that lone lighthouse — loomed up around the
point — on Otter Island. The map promised
things behind that island and the promise
was kept promptly, richly.
At first, we thought it a great strip of
quartz in the precipice. Then Joe shouted,
"Water-fall over dere," and pointed. The
"Ninety-Foot Falls" were taking their per-
petual, "death-defying" leap in to the lake!
They are really twin -falls. The Rideau
River, wearied of laughing down through
gloomy canyons, just passes up the whole
job — ninety feet up there on the cliff — and
tells its water-children to shift for themselves.
So they jump over the brink with a scream
— and feed a myriad trout below. We
stopped there — naturally — and fished. I
will not say how many fish came gamily to
the willing net. They were enough to feed
us — that was all.
At the foot of the falls we had another
call. It is curious how quickly one adapts
one's self to the isolation of the wilderness.
[101]
"No Landing for Boats"
Two days out and the sight of a stranger,
a sail, or even smoke on the horizon will
precipitate a perfect frenzy of curiosity. I
never saw a man who craved man's com-
panionship the way Captain McMinimi,
keeper of the Otter Head light, did. He had
sighted us from his eyrie and came skimming
across the bay in a thirty foot Mackinaw, as
trim and dainty as a boat-builder's "ad."
He had seen two "tourists" in two months.
He asked about George Rex and Theodore
Alleged-Rex and American League baseball
and the Russo-Japanese treaty. It was
gratifying to find an audience so avid and
appreciative. We gave him salmon-flies, a
box of Jim's cigars (they were "out-of-
door" cigars and Jim was asleep), and a
bottle of Scotch, and, in return, Captain
McMinimi charted the fishing-reefs for us
and, leading the way in his natty little boat,
piloted us to harbor, deep down Otter Cove,
where we made camp. He scarcely left us
for two days. He drank in the news of the
[102]
Ninety-Foot Falls."
For WP Vmrl Fnnnrl flip PLnrp r»f TVTnnQtpr Trnuft"
A Battered Hull
world and the conversation and jokes of the
camp in long, luxurious draughts. His grati-
tude for mere human presence was pathetic.
Last fall we heard again of Captain McMinimi
— our host at Otter Head. It was a dis-
patch sent out by some lone telegraph
operator in the Canadian Pacific station at
Heron Bay. Captain McMinimi had set
out — in that same dainty little craft — for
Heron Bay to lay in his fall supplies. He
never reached there. They found — a week
later — a battered hull, overturned on the
rocks. Inexorable Superior offers a certain
grim companionship of her own.
We made the White Gravel River, twenty-
five miles from Otter Head, in a half -day's
run. The Swallow and White Spruce — both
excellent streams for small fish — we passed up
temporarily. The weather was good and the
need of making time oppressed us. But
there was no slighting the White Gravel.
Gentlemen-fishermen, returning joyously, had
told us of its pools and possibilities. The
[103]
"No Landing for Boats"
Log and the chart warned Navigating Officer
Bill that we must be abreast of it. So we
checked and ran nearer shore to reconnoitre.
It 's a fad of Superior rivers to hide their
mouths behind sand-bars. They 're very
coy about it. We 'd learned to be in-
quisitive. Else we had missed the White
Gravel. The actual outlet was just wide
and deep enough — through the riffle — to
admit the Wagush to the good shelter of the
inner basin.
We poled in cautiously, too, because we
knew THEY were there. You can never
mistake the river-water that is colored like
wine-jelly. That means fish. While Joe
and Cookee Art, cut tent-poles and balsam
and a tripod, we moored the launch and
stepped out upon the sandy shore of that
amber-filled basin to cast. THEY, too,
craved human society, even as Captain
Me Minimi had craved it. Jim — the Log
says — caught his first trout there. He had
fished for bass and pike, possibly muscallonge,
[104]
g,
tL,
fe'S
£.3
IS
0
i
Comforted by Kas-kas-ka-nig-gee
and was rather inclined to be patronizing
in a trouters' discussion. It was n't such
a lunker — about three pounds — but Jim
gave all the premonitory symptoms of
apoplexy when that trout struck and broke
water and he talked little and in hushed
whispers at the camp-fire that night.
Two miles up the White Gravel River is
a pool, circular, dark, deep, and peopled with
darting shadows. We fished it in the per-
functory, impious way that men fish all
pools, when they are pressed for time and
"must reach the falls" — by some law of
stupid impatience — up and beyond. I took
a look at that font of mystery and said,
" On to Hudson's Bay, if you will, mad Cook
Tourists. Here I set me down and dream."
So the others climbed around the falls and
plunged on. Oh — insatiable god of curi-
osity! They had taken, maybe, a half-
dozen exquisite swarthy fish from that pool.
I smoked two pipes and took a picture. And
the little kas-kas-ka-nig-gee bird ("my little
[105]
"No Landing for Boats"
silver- throated friend") talked to me. Then
the trout had cooled off. They thought the
Great Peril had passed. They came cau-
tiously out of their asylums in the rocks,
from beneath sunken logs. They were again
self-confident wild things, searching their
prey. I cast carefully — where the others
had not cast — and instantly the ripples took
the food-news, the dinner-call, about that
pool and the carnival was on. I had a little
net, a spineless, maddening implement such
as cunning sporting-goods men make and
blundering tenderfeet buy. I got "doubles"
and, twice, a "triple" and each time that
net, that instrument of commercial avarice,
would buckle or turn turtle. I shouted for
help. But only the falls and sympathetic
kas-kas-ka-nig-gee, who understood, answered
me. I '11 remember that pool and the
creel-full they made.
A curious phenomenon was materialized
to dash our hopes when we arrived, suc-
cessively, at the Big Pic and Little Pic rivers.
[106)
Little Pic and Great Chagrin
It was down the Big Pic — then the Pijiti<
that the French descended from Hudson's
Bay in 1750 where they had plundered and
slaughtered a factory of those hardy wilder-
ness-adventurers. We found mud, beautiful,
yellow, liquid mud. The two rivers were
breaking all midsummer records for high
water. The reef fishing at the mouth of
the Little Pic, reputed to be about the best
on Lake Superior, was out of business for
a month at least. Disconsolately we cranked
the Wagush and moved on.
The Log shows 160 miles covered in Wagush
and Joe's tow-boat in that trip up the shore,
begun at Michipocoten Island. There the
tyranny of the calendar showed its hydra-
head and certain inquisitive telegrams from
forgotten offices awaited us at the first
Canadian Pacific station where we called
for two-weeks-old mail. So we were coasting
back along the North Shore. We had to go
to Michipocoten Harbor, on the mainland,
this time to catch the steamer. There is
[107]
"No Landing for Boats "
an ore-carrying railroad there and a steam
crane. We had to have that crane. It was
easy enough to slide the Wagush into the
water, but a very different matter to lift
her and her good ton of avoirdupois out of
the water.
It 's feasible only to name those exquisite,
lonely little streams which we sighted on
that return cruise and found it not in our
hearts to slight. They were the White
Spruce, Swallow, Pike, Ghost, Eagle, Dog,
Mountain Ash, Pickerel, and a half-dozen
others which the map refuses to dignify
with names at all, but which, nevertheless,
are peopled with trout-folk. Once the com-
mutator-shaft went ailing. Where we went
ashore to diagnose the malady there was a
stream, twenty feet wide and, maybe, four
feet deep. Billy, knowing little about com-
mutator-shafts and much about trout, cast
instead of tinkering. We heard his frantic
shouts for a net. Of course the net was stowed
beneath everything else in the launch. And
[108]
No Landing for Sea-Gulls
Billy, netless and single-handed, drew a
four-pound trout out on the beach.
It enjoyed a highly dramatic climax, that
cruise. There is a stretch of the coast, of
eleven miles, between Point Isacor and Boat
Harbor, which the map frankly declares to
be "No landing for boats." As a matter
of fact, it's no landing for sea-gulls. The
shore rises straight out of the water and
towers aloft dizzily from 100 to 250 feet.
Of course, we knew of that stretch and planned
to get as near it as possible, wait for daylight
and calm water, and make a dash for safety
on the other side. Very cunning and far-
sighted in her cunning, however, is Lake
Superior. She pretty nearly had us — for
all our caution and strategems.
We had been storm-bound for three days
in Otter Cove. A gale from the southwest
raved and dared us. Time for the sailing
of the steamer from Michipocoten Harbor
was drawing perilously near. The fourth
moining we were up before dawn. The day
[109]
No Landing for Boats
promised fair. There was no wind. The
sea was still high, but promised to subside
if the wind kept off. We planned to make
Ghost River where the river-basin, we were
told, would offer shelter for the launch, camp
there over night, and then have a day to
race past "the bad lands."
Three times that day the seas drove us
ashore. Joe's boat wallowed and once was
half -swamped. We would bail out, dry off
and warm up about a drift-wood fire, and
try it again. Steadily the sea had been
rising and the weather thickening when
we reached Ghost River, thirty- two miles
from Otter Head, just at dusk, beneath
lowering skies. Giant seas were racing in,
with their crests crowned with wind-spray.
And we found Ghost River choked with
sand and no shelter!
It was a nasty mess. We could n't stay
here. A hard blow was coming, straight
into that bay. We could n't go back ten
miles or so to harbors we had passed. The
FIIO!
Hatless from the Green Abyss
quartering seas would swamp us. And the
eleven miles of "No landing for boats,"
of hungry reefs and dizzy precipices, were
ahead of us. And night and a gale were
hurrying along together.
We held a hurried consultation. We
looked to Joe, when we had decided, and Joe
said, "Let's go on — Quick." We went
"quick." When we swung out into it again,
green water came into our laps in barrels
and we looked anxiously astern until we saw
Joe and Art. emerge hatless from the green
abyss. Then for an hour and a quarter no
man spoke except in sharp monosyllables;
but just looked at his watch and then out
lakeward whence the gale and green-moun-
tains were coming. Twice the tow-line
snapped and we rounded-to in the smother
and picked up Joe's wallowing boat and its
pallid crew. Marv. hovered over the gasoline
engine as a mother over a sick child and
watched its every breath with a mouth full
of heart. Had the engine faltered in that
[ml
"No Landing for Boats "
sea and gale beating on a rock-bound coast —
But it was n't fun thinking about it.
We could scarcely make out the mouth
of Boat Harbor in the blackness and the
surf. We had to take a chance. It looked
like a harbor. We couldn't weather it
much more than a half -hour longer, anyway.
" Here goes, " said the Camp Boss. " Hang
on — as long as you can, fellows."
And he put the wheel hard-over. Superior
picked us up and smacked us down in the
centre of Boat Harbor. We hurdled the
harbor-mouth, that was all. We were flung
into shelter and a good camp-site and warming
drinks and a ten o'clock dinner. Superior
had had her brutal prank with us and grown
bored. The next morning Superior was
smiling again and in the smile we saw the
smoke of the Caribou. After all, smoke is
about the fulfilment and the end of all
earthly things — even vacation-dreams.
[112]
CHAPTER VI
IN THE TROUT DEMOCRACY AND REEFS OF
CHIPPEWA HARBOR
THE very best that I can do is to say
that all this happened on the east-
north shore of Lake Superior within fifty
miles of Gargantua, which is itself about one
hundred miles north of Sault de Sainte Marie.
It is unfortunate that I must be thus evasive
and non-committal at the very onset, but
fisherman's ethics will justify this stand.
About trout-rivers and reefs you hunted
out or stumbled over by yourself you can
prattle all you please. They are yours and
you can haunt them or tell unsympathetic
editors about them or romance to dinner-
parties about them and do nothing worse than
make a fool or a bore of yourself. But
when you are rowed to them in another
man's boat, by another man's Indian, on
8 [113]
In the Trout Democracy
top of another man's breakfast, with another
man's cook to fry your trout, and a flask
filled with another man's appetizer in your
pocket — why, then those rivers and reefs
are really not yours to prattle about. You 're
a camp-guest — sacred and ancient mutual
obligation of the wilderness — that 's what
I was — camp guest.
And such camping! Why, we had grape-
fruit for breakfast and cocktails before din-
ner! The third morning up there the Editor
was impatient because the camp-manicurist
was n't on the job. Personally, I was n't
accustomed to Indian-packers who run up
and firmly and reproachfully take an oar or
an axe out of your hands, much as the
lord-chamberlain would rebuke King George
for trying to crank his own runabout. It
was incredibly luxurious. The capacity of
camp-guest brings its compensations. Before
I left I had Indians sharpening my lead-
pencils for me. The greatest lesson the
wilderness teaches, perhaps, is adaptability.
[114]
"A Sailor Home from the Sea"
This much I can safely tell you of that
camp! Besides being pretty close to Gar-
gantua, it is a wonderful little harbor, another
four-fingers-and-thumb thrust into the shore-
line of Lake Superior, and we were encamped
upon the nail of the middle ringer with a
rocky island effectually blocking the entrance
and warning back the booming surf — Call it
Chippewa Harbor, if you like, and that 's
pretty close, too. Beside my tent was a
grave. A sailor, just a nameless sailor, had
been washed up there ten years ago. The
Indians found him. They put stones over
him against the wolves and lynxes and a
rough cross at his head. And he slept there
beside me, a tired soul "home from the sea,"
a very quiet bunkie, and his parents, per-
haps his wife and children, will never know
the place where he is sleeping.
Camp was ready for us when the steamer
Caribou, whistling blithely, hove-to and
dropped us into the camp-boats which for
hours had waited outside the headlands for
[115]
In the Trout Democracy
us. A cook in white cap and apron was
frying trout — and cooling cantaloupe! It
was too absurd — and intoxicating !
Our Host met us — with a whoop and a
delirious waltz upon the rocky beach. That 's
the way the Host always greets his guests in
his camps. He has five of them — camps,
not guests. They are duck-shooting camp
and deer-shooting camp and prairie-chicken
camp out west and quail camp in Georgia
and tuna camp in California. That host,
by the way, is now Governor of the Common-
wealth of Michigan. There is only one man
who knows the Superior country as well as
our Host and that 's the Judge — but, as I
said, the camp-cookie was frying trout.
There we met "Tommie," a very old and
amiable Chippewa full-blood from Batche-
wana Bay. Tommie was just picking up my
rain-coat carefully by the tail, that two pipes
and a tobacco-pouch and a box of one hundred
cigarettes might tumble out of the pockets
into the water with the least possible re-
[116]
Gargantua Light Is More Hospitable than it Looks.
Abandoned by the Honorable Hudson's Bay Company
Cognomen or College Yell
sistance. Our Host introduced him. He
said, "This is Nish-i-shin-i-wog, " which
means "Friend of Men," which we all knew
with the exception of the Cartoonist. He
said, "If that isn't a college-yell, I didn't
catch the name," and the Indian beamed
delightedly and said, "Make um Tommie,"
which forthwith the Cartoonist did. Tommie
Nish-i-shin-i-wog has a place in this narrative
farther on.
It was a funny thing about Nate. He was
a camp-guest, too. Back in civilization
comparatively few men called him Nate
and held their jobs, because he was president
of a big public service corporation. Several
thousand employees called him "Mister"
with awe. And, because he was president
of a public service corporation, the gamboge
dailies called him a variety of things. But
in camp he was " Nate," even to Tommie, who
revelled in the rare monosyllable. Never,
outside of one of Mr. Robert W. Chambers'
heroes, have I seen a man piscatorially so
[117]
In the Trout Democracy
well equipped as Nate. His accumulated
rod-cases and leader-boxes alone gave the
steamer Caribou quite a list to port. He
owned stock in several dozen trout-preserves
and belonged to several thousand fishing
clubs. He was accustomed to wait for a
wire from a keeper that a trout had actually
been seen. Then he would bump elbows
with five hundred fellow-members and stalk
that trout with cunning and technique.
When it was caught and tipped the scale
magnificently at a full half-pound, its captor
would give a wine dinner and have the trout
taxidermed ior "the trophy room," and the
club would present him with a silver dinner
service.
So Nate came to the waters of four-pound
brook trout with skepticism. After the
first camp-dinner Tommie took Nate in the
work-boat and rowed him about a quarter of
a mile across the harbor to the rocks. They
were gone maybe an hour. It was dark
when they came back. Nate came up to
When Man Enters at His Peril
the camp-fire with a landing-net full of six
fish, for the smallest was two pounds. " Think
of it," he said awedly; "I was figuring it
out rowing back to camp. Why, I pay about
$1500 a year to catch minnows too small
for bait for these whoppers." Thereafter
Nate and Tommie were as Damon and Pyth-
ias. Tommie knew the holes, and than Nate
I never saw a prettier fly-caster or a better,
cleaner sportsman.
There is a little river flowing into Superior
just where the bones of a wrecked lake-
freighter lie bleaching on the reef. It was
late in November when a gale from the north-
west accompanied by a snow-storm and zero
weather drove the vessel from her course.
They had tried to make Michipocoten
Harbor but the gale would have none of it.
Her powerful engines were useless and the
seas flung her into that cove and piled her
on the rocks so close to shore that the crew
made it, scarcely wetting their feet. Then,
however, their real hardships began. They
[119]
In the Trout Democracy
had twenty miles to go over a trailless and
incredibly rough country. We found a sled
which they had made of wire and barrel-
staves. Two of them reached Michipocoten
Harbor. One died there from his exposure.
The other had a frozen foot and leg ampu-
tated. Help was sent back and the rest of
them were taken from the pilot-house which
had washed ashore and still stands there
among the balsams to bear witness to Su-
perior's retribution when winter drops the
gates and man enters at his peril.
But it was n't the wreck that interested
us in that river. There were trout in it.
Jim found them. Jim, you see, played first-
base on the Country Club baseball team
and he could n't see why he should n't keep
his throwing arm in shape on a camping
expedition on Lake Superior. So he brought
a mit and glove and a few balls along. When
he produced them we laughed derisively.
Then one of the Indians proclaimed himself
the short-stop of the All-Chippewa team.
[120]
I
Q
Technique of the Judiciary
Our Host remembered he was a college-
pitcher in the early-somethings and the
Judge himself had a "wing" that defied
the ravages of time and the sedentary ten-
dencies of a judicial career. We had team-
practice regularly after breakfast. In a
quick throw to catch an imaginary runner
off first, I threw perfectly to the centre of
the little river. That 's how Jim discovered
the trout.
One morning Jim offered to take the Judge
up the river. That pleased the Judge and
he let Jim take him. When Jim — that was
his first trout-fishing experience in that
country — heard that night at dinner that the
Judge had fished that river for forty-two
years and was the only white man that
had seen its headwaters, Jim was actually
embarrassed. But Jim was rewarded. He
saw the Judge fish — with a little two-and-
a-half -ounce stream -rod. I had often won-
dered how the Judge could follow me down
a stream and double my kill day after day.
[121]
In the Trout Democracy
What Jim narrated that night at dinner
dissolved the mystery.
It was a small river. A pound-fish in it
was an achievement. It seems that the
Judge got a big rise in a pool. Jim went on
down the river, waited an hour for the Judge,
and came back. The Judge had just changed
all his flies for the sixth time. The fish
was still wary. Then the Judge sat down
and smoked and let the fish forget the whole
incident. Then he changed his flies again
and worked around to the other side of the
pool, trying a new angle. Jim was making
remarks by this time and the Judge urged
him to go down to camp, because he, the
Judge, had a mission in life and he was
going to stay on the job and fulfil it.
After the third intermission and two hours
and a half of actual manoeuvring and strate-
gem and patience and most finished tech-
nique, the Judge teased that fish into rising
again. Then he struck him and landed him,
two and a half pounds — just the weight in
[122]
Two Miles Perhaps
ounces of his rod — of sinew and savagery
and deep mahogany color.
Somewhere, about two miles back of camp,
there was a lake. Camp had done no fishing
for two days. We had as many fish as we
could eat and no man would defy public
sentiment by killing more. I thought of
that lake and the possibility of seeing,
perhaps photographing, a moose among its
lily-pads. I took camera, Colt, compass, a
steel rod and spinner and started for an old
blazed trail which began a mile down the
Superior shore. Our Host hailed me. He
said he wanted some exercise himself, but
I discerned his real reason in suspicion of
my woodcraft and a pardonable propensity
to lose one's self in the tamarack-swamps.
Frankly, I was glad of this guide, the best
woodsman in the whole north country.
We found the blaze and followed it at a
pace that must have been a violation of the
local speed ordinance. As we went our
Host remembered that five years before he
[123]
In the Trout Democracy
had built and floated a raft on that little
lake and thought it must be there yet — if we
could find it. When we got the first glint
of its waters, we slowed down and went
cautiously.
"Look, look!" whispered our Host.
"There's one! There's another and an-
other!"
A great bull moose, a cow, and a calf —
evidently they had seen or scented us — were
moving off into the shadows, without a
sound. That glimpse of wild life in the
heart of the wilds was worth the two miles
up-hill. We circumnavigated that lake —
and no raft. Reeds and lily-pads fringed
its heavily wooded shores. It was so still
that our voices reverberated like cannon.
I lighted a pipe and laid down the steel
rod.
"What did you bring that for?" asked our
Host.
"I thought there might be pike in the
lake," I answered somewhat dubiously.
[124]
Fought it Out Fish to Fish
"There are pike," said our Host.
"And no raft," I ventured.
"Are you afraid to get wet?" suggested
our Host.
Of course I was n't. I may have been
a minute before. But now wading an un-
known lake of unguessed depths was about
the best thing I did. I was just a little
nettled. With rod in right hand and the
spinner dangling I plunged boldly in — I had
forgotten about the silt-bottom which is
about as firm and satisfying a thing to walk
upon as a sidewalk of thunder-clouds.
When I was down to the waist, I tossed my
watch, revolver, and camera ashore. Then
I found a submerged twig and stood upon it
to cast. The spinner went shrieking out
forty feet or so, just beyond the lily-pads.
There was a splash ten feet away. A big
fish had thought of something. Then a
swirl and another splash and I, standing on
a rotten twig, was hooked to a submarine.
Of course the twig broke. I went down to
[125]
In the Trout Democracy
arm-pits, then to neck. Then I began
swimming and that pike and I fought it
out among the lily-pads, as fish to fish. At
last I got close enough to shore to throw a
convulsed comedian the rod and he dragged
a six-pound pike out in the bushes. I needed
the run home in the twilight to set up circu-
lation and shake off the mud.
"The joke of the jokes," admitted our
Host, "is the fact that I had n't the slightest
suspicion there was a pike within five miles.
I just wanted to see you swim." I laughed
perfunctorily a chilling laugh.
All pink and glowing we were dashing
tent-ward from the lake bath that morning
when Tommie Nish-i-shin-i-wog interrupted
us. He had just come with pails of water
for Cookee. Tommie had something weighty
on his mind. We could see that.
"Bear-track — big one — oh, very big! — "
said Tommie, with his two hands together
for purposes of graphic illustration: "Come
see!" We did — and we saw — it was made
[126]
Tracks and Artistic Foreboding
in the wet sand — not fifty feet from the cook-
tent, not seventy feet from our own profound
and virtuous slumbers. And such a track!
It looked a good deal like a track such as a
seven-foot, barefoot man might make —
only the claws were there. We were all
thrilled and pleased — save the Cartoonist.
He was frankly oppressed. Several times
during the day the Cartoonist went down
to the beach and looked at that bear-track,
spanned it with his fingers and came back
ominously shaking his head. All day he
talked of his hypothetical meeting with a
giant bear or wolf-pack or hungry lynx
family. He brooded over it. We couldn't
cheer him. That evening about the camp-
fire the Indians outdid one another in tales
of dreadful encounters with wild beasts.
Our Host showed a scar on his arm left by
a wounded she-bear, he said, and the Car-
toonist listened fascinated by the horror of it.
The Cartoonist and I bunked together in
the tent nearest the thicket of juniper and
[127]
In the Trout Democracy
tag-alder that hemmed in the camp. He
slept in a Jaegar sleeping-bag, a luxurious
provision of our Host; I upon the softest
bed in the world, balsam-boughs, and my
pillow was against the rear wall of the tent.
While we donned our couch-draperies the
Cartoonist continued to discuss gloomily
our chances of escaping the digestive organs
of some hungry wood-monster. I asked
him at last if he did n't know the camp was
"playing horse" with him and he was genu-
inely relieved and grateful. In fact, for the
first time in sixteen hours he forgot the
bear-track.
I had n't been asleep when I first heard the
sound. It came three times before I decided
to speak. I thought the Cartoonist was
moving in his canvas sarcophagus. I asked
him why he did n 't go to sleep.
"That isn't me," said the Cartoonist
with the bad grammar of a genuine panic.
"There's something outside the tent trying
to get in."
[128]
Something with a Snort
"What had we better do?" asked the
Cartoonist.
"We might sing," I suggested.
Then it happened! The sound of our
giggles moved the something-outside to
action. With a snort the something began
lifting the canvas directly beneath my left
ear. I arose horizontally in the air and landed
in a rigid kneeling position, facing the in-
truder. As I did so, I believe, I exclaimed
fervently, "My God!"
"That's right, old man," said the Car-
toonist. "Whatever it is, let's get the
Deity on the job just as soon as we can."
"Get the lantern," I said. I heard the
Cartoonist floundering and muttering. Then
he said, "Say — I'm tied in this blankety-
blank thing. Sleeping-bag — hell! It's a
fire-trap. That's what it is."
I got him out, I think, by the hair. We
had just lighted the lantern with trembling
fingers when the something bumped into the
tent and I could see the outline of a very
9 [129]
In the Trout Democracy
bulky form. I kicked it with a socked foot
and it crashed off into the bushes, making
about as much noise as a neurotic milch-
cow might make. Armed each with a
hob-nailed boot, we sallied forth pajamaed.
"If it 's a bear I '11 give him a black-eye,
anyway," said the Cartoonist.
First, I found a stout little stick about two
feet long. It looked most serviceable, until
I found one double the weight and length.
So I gave the first stick to the Cartoonist.
Rapidly he made the inevitable comparison
and said:
"Here — I 've been short-changed on these
sticks." We started determinedly for the
outfit-tent to get my revolver and had gone
maybe fifty feet down the black trail — when
the lantern went out. Simultaneously there
was a snort and crash in the bushes beside us.
The Cartoonist and I clinched. Also we shout-
ed— cheerily — to the rest of camp. The Editor,
thrusting his head out of his tent, said things
which only an irritable editor, unfamiliar
[130]
Theories and Blazing Logs
with the facts, can say. But I noticed that
the Indians replenished the fires and took
their guns to bed with them. As for the
Cartoonist, he conscripted a rifle, two re-
volvers, an axe, and a hunting-knife and, on
top of his sleeping-bag, laid him down to
pleasant dreams.
With two men in camp so familiar with
the "language, customs, and laws" of the
wilderness as were our Host and the Judge,
it was inevitable that there be much dis-
cussion, at table and about the fire, of the
lore of lake, stream, and woods. I quite
filled a note-book, writing in the glow of
birch logs. The Judge had a theory, based
upon forty years of observation and abun-
dantly confirmed by practice right there in
two striking incidents. The Judge contended
that the big trout frequently takes a fly out
of sheer belligerency. He is guarding his
home-hole and resents the intrusion. That
was the reason the Judge exasperated the
two-and-a-half pounder up the river to rise
[131]
In the, Trout Democracy
after haggling him for two and a half hours.
It came forcibly to me, too, in a way that I
shall tell.
But the "technical talk" wearied Jim.
The Scourge of the Nature-Fakirs still dom-
inated his imagination, you see. He saw
too much romance and pure imagination in
it. He was scornful. One day when we
returned to camp Jim met us all glowing with
excitement. He said he had done a little
"nature-study" himself and had found a
"cuckoo's nest. " We assured him the north-
woods was cuckooless, but he clung to it
bravely. At last he consented to lead us
to his find. We started next morning, Jim
leading, the rest strung out in Indian-file.
Over ridges, down vales, through swamps
and canyons we went, Jim ostentatiously
blazing trees and theatrically making obser-
vations as we went. It was almost noon
when Jim came back and halted us. "Now
we must go cautiously and quietly," he said,
"so we won't frighten the mother-cuckoo
[132]
A Grasshopper Grievance
off the nest." Still we thought it best to
humor him and tiptoed another mile or so.
Then Jim crept up to a black-alder bush.
With infinite care and skill he parted the
branches and said dramatically: "There is
your cuckoo's nest."
We peered in and beheld a cute little fig-
basket with four very fresh olives in it.
But about the belligerency of old trout.
The Judge and I, with Tommie Nish-i-shin-
i-wog and the work-boat and a skillet and
lunch, had started out straight from an early
breakfast. It was my last day in the land
of Vacation Dreams and I longed for an
incident that might make a fitting centre-
piece for the memory of the trip. I got it,
all right. We rowed along the reefs for five
miles. The Judge got one fish and two
other rises. That was all. The surface
of the water was dotted with grasshoppers.
We told each other that the fish were gorged
and Tommie agreed with us. We said we 'd
go ashore, lunch on the Judge's fish, and look
[133]
In the Trout Democracy
up an old trail from Sault de Sainte Marie to
Michipocoten, which the Judge thought ran
close to the lake-shore at that point. We
started back to camp about two in the after-
noon. The grasshoppers were still holding
their impromptu regatta. If anything, there
were more of them. Rather perfunctorily
we began to cast.
There was nothing perfunctory about the
response. We had killed a dozen fish in
the first mile, casting into holes full of silly
bobbing grasshoppers. At last we came to
a place where a mountain had split in two
and half of it toppled into the lake. There
were great half-submerged boulders, big as
the Caribou, all about. Beside one of these
was a hole, showing the green of depths and
the shadow that the big chaps like. " There 's
a likely hole, Judge," I shouted from the
bow— "Try it."
"You can reach it better than I," said the
Judge. "You'll get one there."
I saw my first cast was going to fall a little
[i34l
The New Race in the Lap of the Race that is Passing.
The Reel Screamed
short. I tried to stop it in mid-air, but the
dropper-fly just rested for an instant on the
water five feet from the hole. In fact, I
had started the back-cast when there was
a splash that made us look at each other
with bulging eyes.
"Quick — get back there," said the Judge.
I nearly got Tommie's ear, but the flies, all
three of them, a gaudy Parmachenee Belle,
a Montreal, and a Royal Coachman, settled
directly over the hole. He had the Par-
machenee before the Montreal was really
wet. When I struck him with that four-
ounce rod, he was so solid that I thought
for a minute I had actually hooked a rock.
But for just a minute. Tommie started
madly for deeper water, with that great fish
pacing him. The reel screamed shrilly.
He took more line than I realized for when
he did break water he was so far off I thought
I 'd lost him.
"Start him back quick, before he recovers,"
said the Judge. "Good Lord — what a fish!
[135]
In the Trout Democracy
Don't hurry him. He '11 fight you half an
hour." And he did. Precisely seven times
I had that old patriarch within twelve feet
of the boat, Tommie praying into the net.
And seven times he went away again. Each
time that I snubbed him I thought it the
last. I shouted, implored, stormed, and,
I 'm afraid, cussed. My arms ached and my
nerves were tense as piano-strings. We
had drifted a mile off shore.
"I think he'll do now," said the Judge.
"Give me the net and remember I won't
try it unless you can lift his head out of
water."
Inch by inch he came in then, a steady
desperate resistance — no more mad rushes.
Twenty feet, fifteen feet, ten feet! I could
see him now and I gasped.
"Steady now," whispered the Judge.
"Head out — remember."
Tommie shipped his oars.
I drew a long, hot breath.
"Now," said the Judge.
[136]
Conclusions and Flasks
There was a swish of that net — oh how
skilful — a flurry of spray. He hit the
gun'ale. Tommie slapped him and he tum-
bled into the boat — unhooked!
" Mon-ta-me-gus — hurrah!" said Tommie
Nish-i-shin-i-wog.
"Tommie," said the Judge, "your unprece-
dented emotion is eminently justifiable.
You '11 find the flask in the tin box under
the second seat."
He was a little better than five pounds —
and a brook trout — and there were other
flasks in camp, which proves the Judge's
point that big trout bite from belligerency
and my point that Superior is the land of
Vacation Dreams.
[i37l
CHAPTER VII
A BEATIFIC ERROR AND A SECRET MISSION
WHEN a North Shore fisherman meets
a brother North Shore fisherman
the conversation is quite certain to gravitate
to the region of the historic Michipocoten,
down which the canoe-flotillas of the Hudson
Bay Company once came paddling and
singing from the Great Bay to Sault de Sainte
Marie. They will talk about the Michi-
pocoten's colorful and not entirely honorable
history; its falls, a hundred and eighty feet
high, and its miles upon miles of boiling rapids
of which they have possibly heard. Then
the North Shore fisherman will assume an
expression of wood-wisdom quite profound
and say to his brother — if his brother has n't
said it first:
"Funny thing, there 're no trout in the
Michipocoten."
[138]
The Ancient Colloquy
And the brother will retort with equal
gravity and finality:
"Nothing for 'em to feed on. Wrong kind
of water."
The first North Shoreman says:
"Yep."
And each feels that he has, indeed, found a
kindred spirit in the wilderness and an appre-
ciator worthy of his pearls of wisdom.
I have heard that colloquy, according to
statistics of the Log, 5179 times in my
considerable journeys to the Lake Superior
country. Before we ourselves knew anything
of the Michipocoten country we used to
discuss this ' ' no- trout-in- the- Michipocoten ' »
theme and wonder why it appealed so potently
to the imagination of the average North
Shore fisherman, which is not habitually
morbid. It got so, that whenever we met a
strange fisherman on the steamer or train
or portage or at a fishing-station we 'd de-
liberately manoeuvre the conversation around
to the Michipocoten and then, by a spirited
[i39l
A Beatific Error
dash, try to beat him to the trite and tra-
ditional observation. But we always found
him suspicious and alert. " No-trout-in-the
Michipocoten " seems to be as permanent
a fixture in the Lake Superior country as
the Aurora Borealis or the rock of petrified
Nan-i-bou-jou.
During the first three years of quite
ceaseless reiteration, I accepted this slogan
implicitly. I was receptive and tender-
footish. Slowly it dawned upon me that
there must be something wrong with a con-
clusion of which 5179 gentlemen-fishermen
were so cock-sure, so belligerently and un-
reasonably sure.
Then one day, wading up the mad little
Puckoso River, I came upon the tepee of
an Indian, hunting, — Mr. Maj-i-nuten. He
had been a canoe-man for the Honorable
H. B. C. himself. Seeking to impress and
awe that Indian as I myself had been im-
pressed and awed, I drew myself up, looking
very knowing indeed, and let it go:
[140]
William Teddy Embarrassed and George Andre
Resigned.
Speaks Maj-i-nuten
''Funny there 're no trout in the Michi-
pocoten River."
The effect upon Maj-i-nuten, as we sat
there smoking on a rock in the rapids, was
most disappointing and humiliating. The
hallowed observation failed entirely to im-
press and awe Maj-i-nuten. "He blew a
whiff from his pipe and a scornful laugh
laughed he." It was n't quite scornful —
it was just a laugh bubbling with whole-
hearted and utterly uncontrollable enjoyment.
Maj-i-nuten sobered at the sight of my
embarrassment and said:
"Well — you know — it's strandge t'ing
'bout dat. I guess so mebbe dat story she 's
de oldest dam lie what I know."
Silently there among the spruces Maj-i-
nuten and I shook hands. He gave me the
particulars and the proof. It was all very
simple — as I supposed it must be. Maj-
i-nuten had trapped up the Michipocoten
the winter before — every winter — and occa-
sionally carried mail in the summer. He
[141]
A Beatific Error
was full of dreams that were gorgeous and
preparations that were feverish. I besought
Ottawa for maps, and Ottawa promptly
and courteously swamped me with maps
of everything in the Dominion of Canada,
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the
international boundary to the Arctic circle
— with the exception of the Michipocoten
River. I wrote back to Ottawa, grateful
but insistent upon the Michipocoten River.
Then Ottawa packed up and mailed me all
the maps of Baffin's Bay and the Canadian
Rockies that had been overlooked in the
first shipment. Then, wholly by chance,
I heard of an ex-newspaper man in the office
of the Minister of Public Works, Toronto.
My heart sings songs of praise whenever I
think of that newspaper man and the generous
destiny that revealed him to me. He went
up into the musty attic and dug out an old
map of the "Michipocoten Mining Division
of the District of Algoma, Ontario, scale
two miles to the inch." The engineers who
[144]
Ecstatic Lunch
made that old map knew their job and loved
their work. Subsequent events proved that
map's accuracy to be remarkable.
The finding of that map inaugurated the
whole ecstatic campaign of preparation.
The North Shore Club tiptoed into the
private dining-room of the University Club
for lunch. We pulled down the shades and
plugged up the keyhole and put cotton in
the ears of the waiter. We organized the
campaign. Four men pledged themselves
to go. That meant four Indian packers —
one of them a cook — and four canoes. We
must have at least one man who knew the
Michipocoten River. The others must be
experienced canoe-men. We decided to out-
fit at Sault de Sainte Marie, Ontario, to
save freight and duties and complications.
All this meant lively and immediate corre-
spondence. We ordered three A-tents, 7 by
9, and engaged four Peterboro canoes, each
17 feet long and capable of carrying two
men and duffel. We had to get licenses
10 [145]
A Beatific Error
for the guides, too, from the Canadian
government and fishing licenses for ourselves.
The courtesy of Superintendent of Game and
Fisheries Tinsley lightened very appreciably
the burden of preliminary detail.
Altogether, that was a very busy though
joyous lunch that the North Shore Club
had that day. In fact there was little time
to indulge in the delights of anticipation
during those weeks before July 27th at last
rolled around. We had engaged three In-
dians to join us at Michipocoten Harbor.
The other Indian had sworn to meet me at
the hotel, Sault de Sainte Marie, at three
o'clock the afternoon of July 2 7th.
I have yet to participate in or witness the
departure of a camping party that was un-
accompanied by a hearty panic for all hands.
That is the final hour of reckoning, too late
for a remedy, when everybody remembers
what he has forgotten and fearfully antici-
pates what probably will be forgotten. All
day, on that July 26th, I had been sending
[146]
Preliminary Panics
bouyant telegrams on my way up the State
of Michigan, fresh from a tennis tournament,
to join the North Shore Club. When I
staggered off the train, lugging rod-case,
camera, duffel-bags, and creel, I beamed at
the thought of the riotous welcome in store
for me. As a matter of record, those of the
waiting North Shore Club that did not greet
me with chilling languor, greeted me with
open hostility.
Instead of shouting, "Here he is, boys!"
and slapping me on the back and relieving
me of my traps and offering to open white-
labelled bottles for me and singing songs
of youth's springtime and good cheer, they
glared down on me and muttered:
"Well — where in h have you been?"
It took me some time to get to the bottom
of the cataclysm which, apparently, had
overwhelmed them. They had all arrived
in "The Soo" about twenty-four hours ahead
of me and each, according to his temperament
and opportunities and tastes, had developed
[i47]
A Beatific Error
the panic that best suited his purposes.
The A-tents were n't ready. One of the
canoes was too small ; it could n't possibly
be made to do. We shouldn't have time —
just one whole day, that 's all — to buy
supplies and get everything aboard the boat.
Besides all that, all of them felt — largely
intuitively — that the guides would disap-
point us, that we should n't be able to find
the boat-landing, and that it would rain,
possibly snow. Destiny certainly dumped
me down into a nice little family reunion of
the Gloom Brothers. First, I got them all
sitting around a table. It was a warm
night and I called the waiter. When the
waiter had made his third trip we began
to see light, even a little hope ahead. We
divided up into rescue-parties. Jim and
Fred were to get the tents, any tents, and the
four canoes, any four canoes, aboard the
steamer Caribou — and sit upon them until
the Caribou should be well out in Lake
Superior. His Lordship — he was an English-
[148]
Costly Bombardments
man, and a bully good fellow, that 's all — and
I were to buy the supplies, tobacco, dish-
towels, stimulants, and all, get the fishing
licenses, put them aboard the Caribou —
and sit upon them, right opposite, if possible,
the place where Jim and Fred were sitting
upon their cargo.
We were almost light-hearted when we went
to bed in the hotel that night, so considerably
had the cloud of foreboding been lifted.
His Lordship even hummed a snatch of a
very English hunting song and tried a very
English joke as he was drawing his bath.
That brings us down to July 27th, the day
of the sailing. It opened at 6.30 A.M.,
catching Fred between snores — with a deluge
of telegrams — all for Fred. His office had
to have him back right away and, to tell him
all about it, his office did n't care how much
it paid into the yawning coffers of the Western
Union, either. Fred and his office bombarded
each other spiritedly with fifty-word de-
spatches until noon. Then Fred did a wise
[?49l
A Beatific Error
thing and discrete thing. He began putting
all his office's telegrams into his duffel-bag
unopened. He opened them twelve hours
later — fifty miles out in Lake Superior.
As a result his office wired its head off for
two days and then shut up — for three weeks.
Every man must teach his office its place
once a year or so.
By three o'clock — arrayed in all the
splendors of camping-togs, all 1910 model —
we had every essential and slippery article
of freight and baggage aboard the Caribou
and were sitting upon it — all save the Indian
cook. I went back to the hotel to keep my
"date" with him at three o'clock. Came
four o'clock, then five o'clock — but never
the Indian. I rushed back to the Caribou
and jerked the North Shore Club off the
baggage-piles. We organized a cook-hunt.
Sailing-time was approaching and not one
of us — more shame to us — had enough
confidence in the others' culinary skill to
trust to necessity and inspiration. We offered
[150]
A Cookless Departure
a bounty of $5, then $10, then $15 per cook,
dead or alive, delivered Caribou L o. b. by
seven P.M.
When the gang-plank of the Caribou was
hauled aboard and the lines cast off, the
North Shore Club was hanging over the rail
looking longingly shoreward, cookless. The
Great Hare must have heard our prayer.
Joe Corbiere came up and greeted me. Joe
and I have fished and hunted and bunked
together for a long time now. And Joe
can cook. I tried to shanghai Joe right
there. But it would n't do. Joe was going
up the Shore with another party. But
Joe would get me a cook, — yes "I guess
so mebbe" — perhaps — sure, at Batchewana
Bay — yes, even though he had to beat him
into insensibility with a tent-peg. Joe ac-
cepted the bounty and I knew we 'd have a
cook for breakfast, albeit a battered and
bruised cook. But a cook is a cook.
We were due to reach Batchewana Bay —
a fishing-station and half-hearted Indian
[151]
A Beatific Error
settlement — at four A.M. I told the ship's
watchman — for another bonus — to call Joe
and me at 3.45 A.M. Joe met me at the
gang-plank. Dawn was just breaking. We
tiptoed off into the cook-country, going
quietly not to flush them. We came to a
shanty in the poplars and half-light. Joe
threw open the door, stalked up to a sleeper,
and said something in Indian that sounded
like a foot-ball signal. The sleeper, an
Indian, grunted, got up, grabbed for his
trousers and hat, and said "all right," pre-
cisely as if this being yanked out of bed at
four A.M. to go to the Arctic circle with a
pack of strange, pale-faced lunatics were a
lifelong custom.
And it was old Tommie Nish-i-shin-i-wog.
I did n't know that Tommie could cook,
but it was Joe's party and responsibility —
not mine.
When we got back to the Caribou I made
Joe a proposition to come to the big city
and open an intelligence office based upon
[152]
De Gustibus— Alas !
just those business methods. In ten minutes
he had convinced me that there 's only one
way to get a "perfect jewel'* for the kitchen.
The Caribou was an hour out of Michipo-
coten Harbor — we should arrive there at
3 P.M. — when four men, each in a stateroom
slightly more spacious than a canary-cage,
began redistributing his belongings and re-
making his packs. It was uncommonly
complicated business. First, we were going
up the river — and would start that night.
We must travel light. After the river trip
we were going into permanent camp and
live luxuriously on the Lake Superior shore
and get the reef-fishing. That meant one
pack to go and one pack to stay in the Michi-
pocoten warehouse. Worse than that, it
meant the ripping open on the boat or dock
of every box of bacon, coffee, flour, every re-
ceptacle in that mound of supplies. We all
wrangled over it for an hour, every man
fighting for the item of diet dearest to his
stomach. When a majority sentiment de-
[i53l
A Beatific Error
creed that the stimulants should be reduced
to a full flask per man on that river trip His
Lordship broke down completely and the
spectacle of his unrestrained grief unnerved
us.
But George Andre was there — on the pier
at Michipocoten Harbor waiting for us.
He was the head guide we had engaged by
correspondence. I liked George Andre the
minute I grabbed his great, brown, sinewy
paw. He was a full-blooded Chippewa, six
feet high, lean and rangey. He looked you
squarely in the eye when he talked. The
first thing he did was to try the weight of
one of the canoes. That seemed logical.
Then he fell-to, opening boxes and separating
the wheat from the chaff. He had his two
sub-guides there, too. He presented them
as Peter Kash and William Teddy. Pete
was just a good-natured, fat Indian-cub,
who laughed and ate much more easily
and instinctively than he worked. If Wil-
liam Teddy were a younger man — he is a
[i54]
Providential Coleman
well preserved fifty perhaps — I should guess
his name to be a subtle compliment both
to the President of the United States and
our Most Public Private Citizen. Life is all
an uproarious incident to William Teddy,
too.
The mouth of the Michipocoten River is
three miles from the harbor dock — three
miles across Michipocoten Bay. The work
of picking seven-day essentials out of the
commissary department was progressing very
slowly. The afternoon was waning. We
had to get a start up the river that day;
or to make camp, at least.
Providence sent us Mr. Coleman and his
gasoline launch. We fell upon him and
chartered him for an indefinite period on the
spot. We divided the party. Jim and His
Lordship stayed on the wharf to finish the
work of inventory and elimination. Fred
and I loaded up the Rambler with duffel,
tents, and supplies already accepted and the
Rambler settled down in the Superior waters
[i55l
A Beatific Error
to her guards. We took George Andre,
Pete, William Teddy, and Tommie, and, with
the four canoes leaping and capsizing in tow
astern, we cut across the bay for the river-
mouth to find a camp-site. We promised
to send back for Jim and His Lordship when
the deep, dark hold of the Caribou should
give up the rest of our "grub."
There is a Hudson Bay post there, where
the mighty Michipocoten swings around the
thousandth bend and slips at last into
Superior. That is, the buildings are there —
low, rambling, picturesque old structures
of logs, with great beams cut by hand a
century ago and little diamond window panes.
There is the old house of "The Factor" and
smaller houses where the coureurs des bois
and trappers and defenders of the H. B. C.
once made the northern midnight howl
with epic-songs and journey-end celebrations.
But these buildings are deserted now. The
Hudson Bay Company has moved its post
up to Missanabie. We camped in the front
[156]
Belated Discoveries
yard of the silent post with the ghosts of
other days.
We had put up the tents — the A-tents —
and got out the blankets. George had filled
the water-pail from a spring and Tommie had
the pot on the fire and the potatoes peeled
and the coffee and bacon ready. In the
lull, waiting for Jim and His Lordship, I
thought it wise to run over the map and the
campaign and route with George Andre.
Right there I made a discovery that jolted
me as I had n't been jolted for years. In
my ignorance I had planned to start out at
sunrise to-morrow with the flotilla and pad-
dle briskly and light-heartedly right up the
Michipocoten River. George put a gnarled
finger on a spot of the map about fifteen
miles from the rock where we were sitting
and said firmly :
"Take a week to get there. "
"Why?" I asked with sinking heart.
"Water swift, all rapids," said George.
"Have to pole and line all the way."
[i57]
A Beatific Error
"But we must get up there," I insisted,
pointing to Lake Manitowick, a good sixty
miles by the river, "and do it in a week,
too."
"All right," said George. "We go over
these lakes here, make portage, and do it in
two days."
"How about the portage?" I asked fear-
fully.
"Seven-mile one to start with, to Lake
Wa-Wa," said George.
" Do you think we are carrying a moving-
van in the outfit?" I gasped.
"Mebbe I get a team — at the Mission,"
said George.
"One team to tote four canoes and this
colossal scenic production?"
"Sure," said George. "Get wagon with
rack."
"Take a canoe and get the team and the
teamster, " I said.
George did it. He paddled over to the
Indian Mission and back and reported that
[158]
By Water? or Moving- Van?
the team would be waiting for us with the
morning's sun.
We had a surprise for Jim and His Lordship
when they puffed into camp with another
launch-load of "eats." But they didn't
grumble or call me any of the things I de-
served and fully expected to be called.
The optimism and charity — and appetite —
of the wilderness had already melted the
iron in their hearts. In gratitude I opened
some ox-tail soup and two cans of pork and
beans. Right there Tommie's culinary gen-
ius, hidden these decades beneath a half-
bushel, began declaring itself. We sang
and perpetrated bad puns and capered as we
spread our blankets over balsam boughs
that William Teddy had cut, and sweet
marsh-hay filched from the H. B. C.'s de-
serted barn. We rolled into those blankets,
too, at the time when we should be just
about finishing a huge, indigestible dinner
back in the big city. The camp was very
still in the stillness of the northern night,
[i59l
A Beatific Error
when I took a last look at the bright northern
stars and hearkened to the surf of Superior
and the snores of James. I opened the flap
of His Lordship's tent cautiously. He had
his moustaches in curl papers and was
manicuring his nails by the light of an electric
lantern. I was n't sure how His Lordship
was going to enjoy and last out this trip. He
waved his hand at me gayly and said :
"My dear old chap, this is perfectly
ripping — I say — is n't it?"
Which it certainly was. Then the pack
of half -wolf Indian dogs at the Mission began
howling and I dreamed that I had my eager
fingers around the neck of that "no-trout-
in-the-Michipocoten "-spectre and was chok-
ing it to death with the full delight of a
pleasure long deferred.
[160]
CHAPTER VIII
AND
PORTAGES THE POTATOES
THE surf of Superior, a mile away, was
softly grumbling and the falls of the
Magpie River, just around the bend, could
be heard roaring, so still was the wilderness
morning, when the east glowed from coral
to crimson and we emerged from those
A-tents to begin the day of days. The valley,
wherein we and the old Hudson Bay post had
been sleeping, and the broad waters of the
Michipocoten, with its sand-bar capriciously
thrown up at the post-gates, were still in
deep shadow.
While Tommie urged along the breakfast,
in its essentials virtually an echo and encore
of last night's dinner, we struck the tents,
did up packs, and made another substantial
ii [161]
Profanity Portage
cut in the importable commissary. About
two hundred pounds of tinned stuff was left
with the hospitable family of Launchman
Coleman.
All that which had been O. K. 'ed by four
men as bed-rock and absolutely indispensable
was committed to one pile and I viewed that
pile with growing apprehension. His Lord-
ship's collection of toilet articles — it would
have made a tidy little nucleus for any enter-
prising druggist — we had to steal from His
Lordship's elaborate duffel-bags or fairly
tear from his clinging fingers. It was an hour
of heroic sacrifices and recriminations. At
the very last moment William Teddy tabooed
the tent-poles and on each of the twenty-
odd subsequent portages we thanked W. T.
for that. I looked at the four canoes hauled
out on the gravel beach and that soaring
pile of duffel and feared greatly. George
did it. He stowed it all away somehow.
We climbed over the assorted cargoes into
the canoes gingerly. Jim and Pete were
[162]
Four Canoes — and Dawn
the first to swing out into the stream; then
His Lordship and Billy T.; then Fred and
Tommie. George and I took a last look
around, for an abandoned camp-site gen-
erally yields a wealth of things forgotten. At
last four canoes struggled around the sand-
bar and slipped across the current toward
the Mission just as the sun broke through
the mountain wall to the east and streamed
down a ravine upon us. Nan-i-bou-jou was
bestowing godly smiles upon the expedition
at its outset. I heard His Lordship com-
plimenting the scenery to William Teddy
who indulgently grunted.
With our landing came the first taste of
the wealth of portaging to come. It was not
more than twenty feet high, perhaps, that
bank, but it rose sheer from the beach and,
while we elevated the whole outfit, canoes
and all, up that height, some thirty Indian
dogs fought delightedly for the privilege of
sniffing our commissary department most
critically. Then the first forgotten essential
[163]
" Profanity Portage
was remembered — pack-straps — now repos-
ing languidly in Jim's extra duffel-bag in the
warehouse. We had to rout out the keeper
of the lone general-store for the pack-straps.
William Teddy took advantage of the oppor-
tunity to buy for himself a bottle of "pain-
killer." The Canadian government slaps
into jail the merchant who sells whiskey to
an Indian. So the merchant sells the In-
dian "pain-killer," which, taken in sufficient
quantities, kills pain and dull care and con-
sciousness as if assaulting them with a lead
pipe. It is the vilest mess that cunning and
avarice can possibly concoct. But it suited
William Teddy.
We lashed the four canoes to the wagon-
rack. Indeed, we did better than that.
We managed to strap most of the outfit to
that wagon. Some things of admitted deco-
rative value, such as frying-pans and broilers
and coffee-pots and a pair of His Lordship's
pajamas that fell out of the pack, we tied
around the horses' necks. They were a
[164]
Wa-Wa— Seven Miles!
marvel of condensed and economical loading
— that team and wagon — when we were ready
to start.
"Wa-Wa— next stop," shouted Fred glee-
fully, as he poked His Lordship smartly in
the ribs. The driver, high up on the prow
of the topmost canoe, cracked a villainous-
looking black-snake and we were off — to
the headwaters of the Michipocoten, be-
ginning with a very husky seven-mile hike.
The first four miles was up-hill. The trail
that we followed, with William Teddy lead-
ing, corkscrewed about and grand-right-and-
lefted with the tote-road. We re-united
with the team every once in a while to
tighten up the canoe-lashings and count
the bags and rods and kettles that had been
shaken out and sprinkled along the trail.
When about four miles out on that road,
I stopped Jim to make him a promise. I
promised Jim, that the first thing I should do,
when I got back to the Big City, would be
to kill a certain manufacturer of "hunting
[165]
Profanity Portage
boots." Did you ever have the nails of a
new pair of boots work through the soles —
lots of nails in each sole — of your boots, when
you were in the exact mathematical centre
of a seven-mile trail? That is one of the
chiefest charms and advantages of brand-
new boots. For a while you try to make
yourself believe you 're mistaken and there 're
no nails transfixing your quivering soles at
all. Then you try walking on your heels
and then toes and then sides of your feet.
You sit down and take off your boots while
the black-flies come for miles around to coast
down your nose and hold Marathon races
on your glasses, and you take off those
damnable boots and sympathize with your
feet. That is a stupid thing to do, because
the boots have to go on again and you prob-
ably don't put the nails back in the same
holes they 've made in your feet. So the nails
make new holes for themselves, until you
know that your each sole looks like the top
of a pepper-box. I ripped chunks out of the
[166]
"The Deserted Village "
tail of my flannel shirt and made insoles.
My boots were fairly squdgey with blood at
the end of that trail. His Lordship prom-
ised to go with me to the maker of "hunting
boots" and give him "both barrels," in case
I missed him.
Then we came to Lake Wa-Wa. It opened
out suddenly at our very feet, as those im-
pulsive northern lakes generally do. But
the sight of houses, a whole town, surprised
us more; — hotel, "The Balmoral"; general-
store, post-office, blacksmith shop, all the
urban appurtenances are there on the shores
of Lake Wa-Wa. And they 're all deserted.
Faded signboards and shutters are flapping
in the wind. It is a ghastly, forlorn place —
is Wa-Wa — when the wind whistles through
the broken window-panes and telegraph
wires. That was another of Mr. Clergue's
splendid dreams. He built Wa-Wa in one
sitting and peopled it and started it out
thriving and hopeful. Having built the
town and peopled it, Mr. Clergue said:
[167]
Profanity Portage
"Let 's see if we can't find a gold mine or
something around here to employ and support
the town." But he didn't find it and the
Wa-Wa proletariat gave the keys back to
Mr. Clergue and left "our beautiful city"
to the wolves and bob-cats. I borrowed a
machine hammer and a chisel from the phan-
tom smithy and made over the sub-water-
line of those boots to meet the needs of
comfort.
We had to paddle Lake Wa-Wa from end
to end, five miles of towering, heavily wooded
shores. A thunder-shower came up and
bathed us gently. Then the wind stirred
up a sea, but wind and sea were directly
astern and the four canoes were bowled
along on the crest of the young day's en-
thusiasm. With George in the stern of my
canoe, my responsibilities oppressed me not
at all. He is, without exception, the best
man in a canoe I ever saw. And that is not
remarkable. George carries the mail be-
tween Michipocoten Harbor and Missanabie
[1681
Andre Canoeman
on the Canadian Pacific. They are fifty
miles apart and George, carrying a hundred-
and-fifty-pound pack, runs the trails, [finds
and leaves a canoe on each of the half-
dozen lakes, and makes the round trip twice
every eight days. Why should n't George
know the country and handle a canoe most
masterfully?
Once during the gorgeous paddle to the head
of Wa-Wa I heard a wolf howl contempla-
tively back among the ridges. Three flocks
of duck — all teal, I believe — flew over us
and surveyed us with frank and fearless
curiosity.
The sun was in the zenith when the portage
loomed ahead. George and I went into
executive session. We decided to lunch and,
while lunching, to send the Indians ahead with
the canoes over the half-mile portage to the
first little lake. Right there we had to do
some emergency boat-repairing. The builder
of those canoes had looked no farther than
the polite pastimes of the park-lagoons.
[169]
"Profanity Portage"
There was no thwart amidships upon which
to make a sling for the head of the Indian
carrying the canoe. In ten minutes George
and William Teddy had converted those four
canoes into the bush-going craft they should
be, while Jim and Fred and I stood by and
gave minute instructions which were uni.
formly and properly disregarded. That was
a boisterous and silly lunch. I look back now
upon the blatant confidence and premature
optimism of that hour with profoundest pity
for the four of us. We all told one another:
"Say — this trip isn't so tough after all.
Just enough walking and portaging to keep
us in shape."
And all that sort of tenderfootish rot.
And George heard it and grinned saturninely.
Then we started. The dinkey little half-
mile portage just served to strengthen the
illusion. We brought up on the shore of an
absurd little lake, like a park-pond, and
paddled "across it, with our after-lunch pipes
still fuming.
[170]
Elation Premature
George said that the next portage was
"quite leetle walk — yes — mebbe two mile and
a half — sure — 'bout dat. "
We hit the tote-road again. His Lordship
felt ambitious then. His lunch had nourished
him and his heart was singing. He wanted
to show us — particularly George Andre —
that a blooming aborigine had n't anything
to show him. He picked out the sack of
potatoes for that portage. Potatoes in bulk
stimulate neither the memory nor the imag-
ination. There is no poetry, no inspiration, no
reserve intellectual force, no response to kind-
ness or devotion — nothing but coarse, back-
breaking, soul-revolting weight in a sack of po-
tatoes. We wondered at His Lordship's taste
when he selected the potatoes and left the cam-
eras and rod-cases. But away he went blithely
out on that two-and-a-half-mile portage.
Fred took a pack that quite eclipsed Fred's
physical self — and he went through with it,
too. George, Billy T., Tomrnie, and Pete had
toted the canoes two miles, where the trail
[171!
Profanity Portage
breaks off from the tote-road, dropped them,
and come back for another load. Somebody
had to wait and see that nothing was left
on the portage. The best Indian is distrait
when he 's packing. So I was the last to
leave the landing-place. I won't say what
I carried. The first mile I was ashamed of it
and glad I was last. Then I began thinking
of the others' selfishness and thoughtlessness
in giving me all the heavy work; until, at a
mile and a half, I was just about the shining-
est, groggiest little martyr that ever wan-
dered the woodland without a harp or a halo.
But then I overtook His Lordship. He
was sitting on his sack of potatoes with his
face buried in his hands. I spoke lightly,
cheerily, and he gasped something through
his fingers. I blundered then. I offered to
carry that sack of potatoes — rather to try
to carry that sack of potatoes — for a while.
What I received was precisely what I de-
served. His Lordship arose, flung the po-
tatoes upon his poor, tousled, steaming head,
[172]
Packs and Viewpoints
and staggered off with them, without another
word. I had blurted out my suspicion that
His Lordship was a tenderfoot, a not even
particularly "game" tenderfoot. Then and
there I began making-over my estimate of
His Lordship — because throughout that trip,
whenever there was a man's work or two
men's work to be done, His Lordship was
camping right on the job — every minute.
It simply goes to show that an expensive
camping-toilet and waxed moustaches can
and do disguise the kind of stuff of which
wilderness-friendships and enduring admira-
tion are made.
We finished that long portage in two relays.
Then a paddle of a few hundred yards across
a silent, marshy little lake. Then a portage
of another few hundred yards and another
lake.
We were, as usual, wholly unprepared for
the horrors of "Profanity Portage." George
had said it was — "Guess-mebbe 'bout a mile
— sure — leetle more or less. "
[i73]
Profanity Portage
At first the trail was open and aboveboard
and promised to be good. When it had led
us into the densest sort of undergrowth
and tamarack-swamps, that trail, laughing
derisively, disappeared into the ground and
left us scattering ourselves to the four winds
on moose-trails and caribou-trails. The
Indians had taken the canoes over and
George came back and rounded us up and
shooed us along before him. The last half-
mile might have been the descent to Dante's
Inferno. It was down a long hill. The
bushes were up to one's ears and the ground
was paved with irregular shaped rocks about
twice the size of one's head. With a hundred-
pound pack upon one's back, one's time was
fairly evenly divided between falling down and
getting up again. When we re-united, steam-
ing and cursing, on the shores of another lake,
we gathered around George and demanded
more candor and precision, henceforth, in
his diagnoses.
Then came "Beauty Lake." We named
[i74l
'Then Came 'Beauty Lake'!"
'Something in the Way of Wild Waterways Worth
While."
Then Compensations-
it — and named it "Beauty Lake," because
"Magnificent Lake" or "Exquisite Lake"
seemed hyperbole for the wilderness. It
must have been put there for a purpose —
probably to repay the man who had exhausted
his body and his vocabulary stumbling over
"Profanity Portage." It looked "trouty,"
too. But we had to make camp somewhere
and it was six o'clock and the dark clouds
piling up in the west looked threatening.
We portaged again — maybe twenty rods, —
crossed an unclean pond of muck and slimy
reeds, lugged everything up a steep hill —
and pondered. There was Hawk Lake,
three miles long, at our feet, and a very
nasty looking thunder-storm at our backs.
Then came grumblings over in the hills.
It is not nice to have wet blankets one's first
night on a trip of fast travelling, like this.:
Should we make camp on this hill — an
unpromising site — and beat out the storm—
or take a chance and make a run for it —
for a more level and agreeable camping
[I75J
"Profanity Portage
place? George put it up to me. I put it
up to the North Shore Club. It seemed so
much sportier to take the chance of the
ducking, that no one hesitated. His Lord-
ship— good sport — was quite jubilant over
the gambling element in the situation.
As we swung out into Hawk Lake George
bade me look over the side of the canoe and
watch the bottom. When we came to the
spot, I saw the water bubbling and there,
far down in the lake's floor, I saw a gaping
hole, perhaps a yard across, out of which a
great spring was gushing. There is, un-
doubtedly, a colony of trout around that
spring. But the storm was giving us a pretty
race.
For awhile, the four canoes raced abreast,
eight men putting their backs into every stroke
of the paddles. Then George's flawless
form — not mine — began to tell and we pulled
away from the field inch by inch. Had there
been anybody within twenty miles that
evening, he would have seen all the Hawk
[176!
I
c
o
a
The Roar of the Storm
Lake canoe-records go bump. We had only
the roar of the approaching storm to keep
us pegging at it, but it served. We would
reach each successive camping-spot that
George had prophesied, only to find it too
rocky or too bushy or too exposed or too
sandy — and push on. Jim, in the last canoe
with phlegmatic Pete, — thunder-storms are as
nothing to native indolence such as Pete's, —
began urging a speedy landing, then order-
ing it, then praying for it — then screaming
wildly for it.
William Teddy took the situation in hand
at this dramatic juncture. He had trapped
bears up there the winter before. He shouted
to George in flawless Chippewa and pointed —
but he pointed to the extreme end of Hawk
Lake, a mile and a half away. We turned
and streaked for it — leaving wrathful James
shouting in our wake.
Billy T.'s inspiration was worth it. Back
ten yards from the broad sand beach we
found a grove of birches, with the ground
12 [177]
" Profanity Portage
carpeted with moss and plenty of room for
three tents and the dining-fly. The briskness
and precision with which George and Billy
T. and Pete slapped up those tents was pretty
to see — if we had had time to see it — which
we had n't. Nan-i-bou-jou just turned that
storm cloud inside-out directly over that
grove of birches. We grabbed the canoes,
turned them bottom-up, and thrust the bed-
ding and perishable supplies, such as the
flour and sugar, beneath them. In two
minutes the setting sun and brilliant blue
northern sky popped out again.
While things were sizzling over Tommie's
fire and George and Billy T. were cutting
balsam and filling lanterns, Jim and Fred,
indefatigable fishermen, sallied forth upon
the bosom of Hawk Lake with canoe and
steel rod and trolling spoon to see what they
should see. Fred had n't paddled ten yards
from the beach, Jim casting, when first a
muttered exclamation and then pandemonium
broke loose. The lake was alive — not with
[178]
Pre-Prandial Incident
trout as we hoped, for it looked likely — but
with big, green, hungry, villainous grass-pike.
They could have filled the canoes — so de-
lighted were those pike with the glittering
novelty in the spinner — if Tommie's voice,
back in the bushes, had n't heralded dinner.
I have been body- and soul- wearied on the
trail, several times. But never did every
bone and muscle and nerve cry aloud in
agony as they did that night on Hawk Lake,
when we had finished our pipes on the beach
and I tried to get up to fall into my blankets.
We had done twenty-five miles since sun-
rise and a good fifteen of it had been portaging
with back-breaking packs. I craved another
of George's prophecies. I could n't move,
so I called him and he came out of the bushes,
without a sound, and stood in the light of
the fire.
"This is all right, George," I said, "as
pretty a little cross-country sprint as ever
broke the great heart of a college athlete.
But when do we get trout?"
[i79l
Profanity Portage"
George looked each one of us squarely
in the eye and said frankly:
"If we go fast like we did to-day, t'ree
o'clock to-morrow afternoon — I show you trout
— big ones — sure — mebbe two, t'ree pound."
"No metaphors now about this, George?"
Fred interpolated.
"Sure — all trout," George insisted stoutly.
"If I could move two inches," I said,
"I should certainly do something modest
and timely as befits the occasion."
"My dear old chap," cried His Lordship,
springing to his feet as agile as a freshman
hurdler, "permit me. I can put my hand
right on it."
And he did. He put his hand right on the
biggest quart flask I ever saw — and a quart
can be made to look insignificant, too, at the
end of a portage.
His Lordship — bless his stout, generous,
capacious heart — handed the flask first to
George, who looked at it critically, then
raised it smilingly:
[180]
I S
Felicitations
"To the trout"— then diffidently— " and
de best coureurs des bois for genteelmen —
what I ever see — yet — sure, mebbe — what
I ever see. "
It was all very theatric and delightful.
But we had sleep to get and the Great
Mystery of the Michipocoten to solve with
the morrow's sun — just there over the eastern
ridges.
[181]
CHAPTER IX
THE PERILS OF RUNNING WHITE WATER FIND
WILLIAM TEDDY'S TONGUE
WE might have been camping on Hawk
Lake or Mt. McKinley or at Dr.
Cook's debatable Etah, for all I knew or
cared, when Fred awakened me that morning
— awakened me by dribbling the contents of
a pail of drinking water down into my inno-
cent young face. Then I tried to make
good my promise to wring his neck. Inas-
much as Fred used to be a college-wrestler
and half-back and had never really outgrown
it, I found my efforts to be diverting, but
up-hill work. We effected an armistice and
conceived it to be the neighborly thing to
take what was left in the water pail and go
and awaken Jim and His Lordship. We
tiptoed across the dewy glade and peered
[182]
These Rocks Are Nan-i-bou-jou and Family.
Of Course, we Lunched here at the Lower End of
the Rapids.
Call to Breakfast
cautiously into — an empty tent. In a few
minutes we heard shouts from the lake. They
were mixing it up with those unsophisticated
Hawk-Lake pickerel again.
Tommie's call to breakfast — back there in
the green gloom of the birches — reminded
Fred that he wanted to shave. That was
a curious phenomenon provocative of much
discussion, how a summons to eat always
recalled to Fred the things he had intended
to do before eating. He would sit around
for an hour or so before mealtime, languid
and care-free — then, when Tommie shouted
"breakfast'* or "dinner," Fred would spring
up full of action and determination and rush
off to take a bath or clean his gun or write
a few home letters. For Fred there must
have been some hidden meaning, singularly
potent and suggestive, in Tommie's mono-
syllabic call to "grub."
When we had piled the outfit on the beach
to load the four canoes, our position on the
map was made clear to us graphically, yes,
[183]
William Teddy's Tongue
even geographically. There was McVeigh's
Creek rumbling into Hawk Lake scarcely
a hundred yards away.
It is a curious thing that, no matter what
allurements the trail may hold out just
ahead, the real woodsman never leaves a
snug camp without a pang of regret. And
barring Tommie's fried pickerel which at
breakfast we had valiantly and unsuccess-
fully assaulted, Hawk Lake camp was a very
rollicking sort of a memory.
The gorgeous day was still an infant when
the canoe-keels grated on the beach and we
pushed off, George and I leading, to hunt out
the mouth of Hawk Lake River. It did n't
demand much hunting. We slid into it
smoothly. Then followed some six hours of
enchantment. Hawk Lake River is an ex-
quisite little toy-stream, sometimes scarcely
wide enough to permit two canoes to go
abreast. Again, it widens out into a silent
lake, four or five hundred yards across.
Sometimes the canoe slips silently over deep,
[184]
Exquisite Toy-Stream
dark channels. Sometimes the stream shal-
lows up abruptly and goes giggling over
pebbles scarcely awash. We were in the
water much of the time, lifting the canoes
over baby-rapids. For miles you glide along
over moss and sunken logs in the deep shade
of a leafy canopy that arches the river from
shore to shore and shuts out the blue sky and
morning sun from this green-flecked ca-
thedral in which God and nature as God
made it are being worshipped throughout
those stupendous, silent processes of the
wilderness. Sometimes a school of fish,
darting out from some submarine jungle,
gave us a sensation. But they were lowly
and abhorred suckers, not trout. First, we
portaged around a log- jam; then, around a
furious stretch of the river where there were
more rocks than water and portaging was
easier on the trail than in the bed of the
stream. Once, at the foot of some quite
sizable rapids, which we ran in the canoes
and would have fished, if we had had time,
[185]
William Teddy's Tongue
we came upon a canoe and a parcel hanging
from a tree. The canoe, of course, belonged
to George's substitute on the mail-route, but
the mystery of the parcel will always remain
unsolved.
Four portages in all we made before noon,
the longest about a mile and a half. On this
trail, trudging along in the rear-guard to see
that every pack had at least started over
the portage, I came upon a most attractive
and unusual exhibit for the wilderness.
First I found three clean handkerchiefs of
fine texture and great price. The brand
of sachet lingering lovingly in their linen
depths would have marked them as His
Lordship's, even if the embroidered initials
had not. That was a good starter, but even
that left me unprepared for the lavish, almost
indelicate display of intimate articles to come.
After I had picked up toothbrush, paja-
mas, pound of pipe tobacco, case of calling
cards, and a beautiful pair of bedroom slip-
pers, the real substance and big features of the
[186]
A Setting Becoming to Most Any Canoe.
To Make Camp or to Push on — Time 6.30 P.M.
Wilderness Exhibits
wardrobe began to show on the wabu-bushes
and caribou-moss. I speedily added a pair
of trousers, one boot, a flannel shirt, and a
sweater to my collection. When I issued
forth from the portage and joined the expe-
dition, Fred said, "Hello — what the devil
is this — the 'old-clothes man'? " The carry-
ing of his duffel-bag wrong-end-up cost His
Lordship a box of two hundred cigarettes —
we never did find those.
The river quite suddenly decided to do
something in the way of wild waterways
worth while and spread itself out into a dainty
lake. The map calls it Miller Lake, and who-
ever Mr. Miller is, his judgment in lakes is
most admirable.
At the head of that lake we lunched.
While Tommie fed us, George with Billy T.
and Pete carried the canoes over the half-
mile portage to Blue Lake; Jim, His Lordship,
and Fred played a most boisterous rubber
of "auction-bridge," and I brought the neg-
lected Log substantially up to date.
. [187]
William Teddy's Tongue
That portage itself was an experience
unique. It led through a grove of giant
cedars, jack-pines, Norways, and birches.
Every tree was a Titan and the country was
curiously open and consequently beautiful.
It reminded me of the north country as the
designers of magazine-covers always think
it is.
Down we plunked upon our temperamental
little friend, Hawk Lake River, again. Then
we came upon a shallow alcove-like pond, full
of pike, sunning themselves in the shallow
water, covered with lily-pads.
There were, literally, hundreds of pike.
Jim was with great difficulty restrained from
unlimbering his rod and spinner. Fred
shot several with his little pocket power-rifle.
To be frank, I did n't at all suspect we were
in Lake Manitowick, until a wave came over
the bow of the canoe and cuddled cutely in
my unreceptive lap. We turned a point,
while I was pondering this chilling phenome-
non, and the "big water" opened out before
[188]
"Big Water" and Cold
us. His Lordship turned admiringly to
William Teddy, who up to this time had
declared his complete ignorance of English,
and said:
"I say, old chap, now this is perfectly
; ripping — is n't it?"
Failing entirely to catch the really con-
tagious spontaneity of that burst of - en-
thusiasm, William Teddy grunted — and Fred
and Jim and I just incontinently guffawed.
There were quite a wind and a choppy
sea on Lake Manitowick. That was where
my lap-chilling roller had come from.
It was fortunate for us that our course
took us around a bend and out of the trough
of the sea. Lake Manitowick is eight miles
long and the foam-crested rollers that were
sweeping down that eight-mile stretch made
no place for a canoe. Jim and Peter made
the mistake of trying to hurry the escape
with full steam ahead and their canoe had
shipped a good deal of water before we shouted
to them to "head up into it" and take it
[189]
William Teddy's Tongue
easier. We saw two ospreys circling about
in the zenith when the shores of the lake
began tapering together, preparatory to that
mystic change into a river-mouth. There
was the ospreys' nest in a giant jack-pine
when I focused the camera upon it, but,
somehow, the nest was effaced from the
pine when the film was developed.
"There's the river!" shouted George.
Having implicit confidence in George, I
shouted "There's the river" to the other
three canoes, but, personally, I saw nothing
in the sand beach ahead, apparently un-
broken for miles, to warrant this enthusiasm.
Then the sand beach began swinging open
like a gate and, as we moved to the left, wider
grew the opening and the mouth of the Michi-
pocoten River. Inasmuch as we had come
about eight hundred miles for that moment
it meant something. Its width is singularly
uniform — between two and three hundred
yards, perhaps. Of course, the country is
rough and broken, though the banks of the
[190]
Achievements and Invidious Comparisons.
Mutual Surprises
river are generally low and heavily wooded,
down to the very water's edge. We were
going quietly. The four canoes were strung
out in single file and we were all too busy
with our own thoughts to fling conversation
across the waters. That made possible
that which happened. George and I were
close to the bank. I think George had a
reason in this. We turned a long narrow
point, beyond which an alcove from the
river ran inland and made a little lagoon.
"Don't move too quick," said George in
a whisper, "but look up there by dat big
stump."
A bull moose had lifted his great head from
the water. He had heard or scented some-
thing, but mistaken the direction. Every
muscle and nerve in that huge body bespoke
suspicion, very close to terror. He stood
perfectly immovable, listening, sniffing, for,
maybe, fifteen seconds. Slowly, the breeze
that had carried the warning grew more
candid with that monarch of the wild places.
[191]
William Teddy's Tongue
Slowly he turned his great head in our direc-
tion, and surveyed us calmly, majestically.
Then, with a snort, more of contempt than
fear, he whirled about and disappeared in
the thicket without a sound. The incident
could have been no more graphic, yet unreal,
had I been sitting in a vaudeville theatre
and seen it upon a moving-picture screen.
His Lordship's canoe came up then and
William Teddy and George cut loose a terrific
broadside of Chippewa conversation. That
annoyed Fred. He said it was cowardly
to gossip like that behind the back of a
decent, law-abiding bull moose and asked
George if he knew what might happen if
a scandal like that ever got around among the
other "meese" of that congressional district.
About that time I looked at my watch. I
had a purpose in it. George had promised
the meeting-up with trout for three o'clock.
It was then 2.30 and I hadn't noticed any
very conspicuous trout-emporia in the vicinity.
Jim remembered it, too.
[192]
The Trout-Tryst
"How about that three o'clock date of
ours, George?" Jim asked.
George grinned. " We get there all right, "
he said.
We heard the rapids before we saw them.
Indeed, we were n't a hundred yards from
Pigeon Falls when the announcement came.
There is a fall of eighteen feet there in a
half-mile. The whole Michipocoten River
squeezes itself into a mad jumble of waters
and rocks scarcely fifty feet wide and goes
roaring down the slide, until the hills fling
back echoes of the turmoil. We went ashore,
just where the waters begin to wrinkle up
and look oily in the first clutch of the mael-
strom.
"Here dem trout," said George, stepping
out of the canoe and waving his hand airily
with a grin toward the roaring rapids. I
looked at my watch. It lacked five minutes
of three o'clock.
"Hand me that rod-case, Tommie," said
Jim. Then began a lively scramble, putting
13 [193]
William Teddy's Tongue
up rods, going down to the bottom of duffel-
bags for reels and leader-boxes and fly-books.
As the race grew hotter and the fever raged
more fiercely in our veins, bags were in-
continently dumped out on the rocks, until
that portage looked like a rummage-sale.
Jim and His Lordship were already casting.
Fred was about to plunge into the torrent to
get nearer a likely looking swirl. I was debat-
ing whether to use a Montreal or a Parmache-
nee Belle for the tail-fly, when I beheld George
engaged in some very significant manoeuvres.
I ceased my trout-preparations and watched
George. First, he stood up on a rock and
intently scrutinized that expanse of furious
water. Then he came back and examined
the canoe and the paddles. Then he talked
vivaciously with William Teddy and Pete.
William T., it must be remembered, could n't
speak English. Something in George's eye,
too, was dancing.
"What are you going to do, George?"
I inquired languidly.
[i94l
£
An Idea is Born
"We portage the t'ings 'round rapeed here, "
he said.
"Yes, I know," I said, "but what are you
going to do with the canoes?"
George grinned sheepishly. "Well, I
guess — mebbe — I try run rapeed," he said.
"All right," I said, dropping my rod.
"Let 's do that."
George's face fell. He told me it was
quite out of the question. He said that his
license held him responsible to the Canadian
government for my personal safety and that,
should the rapids gobble me down, he would
be a marked man and never, never be per-
mitted to nursemaid any more fool-tourists.
Then I talked to George rather pertly, I
fear. I told him I was n't a tourist, by a
blankety-blank sight ; that this was my party
and my license and that, if the time should
come that I must have a fussy chaperon
clucking around me, I 'd pass up the wil-
derness and take my vacation feeding the
goldfish in the park aquarium. George
[i95]
William Teddy's Tongue
was deeply affected, but obdurate. Then
I appealed eloquently to William Teddy,
who shook his head, because he couldn't
speak English.
I walked resolutely down to the shore
and stepped into one of the canoes.
"If you can run that water, I can — and
do it alone, too," I called back. For a
minute I actually believed that I might
have to get away with it. Frankly, I was
scared. Then George yelled, "Wait, wait!"
and came running down to the canoe. It
was a very narrow squeak. However, George
insisted upon taking William Teddy if I
was determined to go. William was to take
the bow-paddle, George the stern paddle,
and I the amidships paddle and to paddle
only when I was told. I promised. Also
I told George to tell William Teddy that when
Willam Teddy — because he could n't speak
English — wanted me to paddle or to cease
paddling, he was to shout back to George
and George was to tell me. It seemed a
[196]
Stand up and Yell
waste of priceless time, thus to relay this
vital intelligence. But I could n't see any
other way to keep straight.
I took off my heavy sweater and boots and
revolver. We paddled out in front of the
rapids. George stood up and took a last
survey. Then we swung about and came
down. I can't recall many sensations, save
the overpowering impulse to stand up and
yell — which of course would have been
shockingly inappropriate. The curious thing
about running swift water is that one is not
conscious of the terrific speed, indeed of
motion at all, until one looks at the shore
rushing backward. George and William T.
would put their paddles far out, at arm's
length, and literally pull the canoe over
to the submerged paddle. We grazed one
rock. Then a back-wash from another rock
slopped into the canoe.
William T. suddenly developed symptoms
of extreme perturbation. He began clawing
madly all on one side of the canoe. I could
[i97l
William Teddy's Tongue
see that he wanted to cross the rapids to the
other side. He shouted something over
his shoulder. I waited for George to trans-
late it. Then William T. shouted it again.
Still George was silent. Perhaps he could n't
hear Billy T.'s order in the wild tumult of
the boiling water. William T., anyway, —
William T. who could n't speak any English,
— could n't stand it another second. He
whirled around on me with his black eyes
flashing and yelled in my wondering ear:
" Paddle on the left side— paddle— paddle-
like hell!"
We flashed by Fred and Jim and one could
have knocked their eyes off their cheeks
nicely with a stick. We fairly hurdled a
sunken log and came to the end of the slide,
a sheer drop of about three feet. I glanced
over the brink as we tore down upon it and
fully expected to Annette Kellermann into
those crystalline depths. But William T.
was ready to offer the closing exhibition of
his skill. Just as we made the jump, he
[198]
The Firesand Is "a Pretty and Compact River."
Miracles and Idioms
gave the bow of the canoe a mighty flip
off to left. Instead of hitting nose-on and
diving, we smacked the lower level with an
even keel and raced off into the still slack-
water again.
I turned to grinning William T. and said
frankly:
"Under compulsion, Billy, you can shoot
bad water just as well as you can shoot good
English. No more of that bunk or no more
tobacco.'*
The miracle worked lasting wonders. The
excitement that had brought profanity broke
the silence of the tomb. Thereafter William
T.'s English idioms were the life and joy
of the camp.
Jim, meanwhile, was keeping his three-
o'clock-date with those trout. Moreover,
the trout behaved just as any ingenuous and
single-minded trout that have n't seen a
high-priced fly in about twenty years should
behave. Fred brought the first bulletin
from Jim. He raced down to the spot where
[199]
William Teddy's Tongue
the duffel was piled and said Jim had hooked
something in the rapids which he thought
was probably a submarine and wanted three
or four landing nets. We went up and found
Jim standing on a rock full of optimistic
estimates as to the size of the fish and blood-
chilling epithets for us and our delays.
George went right out into the rapids — neck-
deep — for that trout. And each one that
Jim or Fred or His Lordship hooked in that
torrent fought his captor gloriously to the
last swish of George's deadly net.
When the tents were up and we 'd bathed
and put on dry clothes and His Lordship
had put his moustaches to bed for the night
and those trout were spluttering in Tommie's
frying-pan and we made the Sign of the
Wolf Track with four tin-cups grouped to-
gether and raised chin-high, we blessed our
blundering benefactor who had heralded
the fact that " There 're no trout in the
Michipocoten. "
Of course, we camped right there, at the
[200]
Too Many Nocturnes
lower end of those rapids. I find that at
this camp I made two entries in the Log to
which I evidently attached tremendous im-
portance when I made them. First, George
and Tommie contrived to make some highly
palatable bread in the frying-pan. Second,
I caught a big wall-eyed pike below the
rapids on a Parmachenee Belle. But those
events, in retrospection, fail to provoke a
thrill now. It is curious what a self-centred
egotist a camper can become. But it 's more
curious that a wall-eyed pike should rise
to a fly, as this finny aesthete unquestionably
did. After dinner that night Pete took a
hook, about the size of a yacht's anchor,
baited it with raw pork, and yanked grass-
pike out of the slackwater at our front
doorstep until his arm ached. That 's why
we found no trout in the beautiful riffles
just below the falls.
I am tired of ending these chapters with
the night-enshrouded camp, the camp-fire
burning low, and the north wind moaning
[201]
William Teddy's Tongue
in the Norway-pines and everybody snoring
vilely. It is symbolic and logical, perhaps,
but I don't want the reader to get the im-
pression that I can't stop writing without
being put to sleep.
The next morning — there, we hurdled
that alluring picture of the nocturnal wil-
derness— the next morning, we picked up
and paddled off — across Whitefish Lake. I
am not sure — neither is George — whether
Whitefish Lake was so named because
somebody really thought he saw a whitefish
in it, or thought the map made the lake
look like a whitefish. I have too much
respect, even affection, for the maker of my
map to be drawn into the discussion. Any-
way, we trolled the whole six miles of White-
fish Lake, in the vague hope that a namaycush
would become enamored of the spoon or a
whitefish get side-swiped by it — with no
material returns. As a matter of fact, it
was full of long-necked weeds.
Then, about ten o'clock, we came to
[202]
His Lordship Needful
Frenchman's Rapid, with its exquisite setting
and many trout. We lunched there, and
lunch, when you have His Lordship to pre-
pare the convivial preliminaries, offers a
place to halt, quite as attractive and fitting
as a "night-enshrouded camp." -
[203!
CHAPTER X
THE TROUT OF CAT PORTAGE, THE FULFILMENT
OF ELEVEN MONTHS' DREAMING
/"^EORGE thought it "safe and sane" to
^~* portage the outfit a half-mile around
the falls at Frenchman's Rapid. After Wil-
liam Teddy's triumph at Pigeon Falls, I felt
competent to shoot Frenchman's Rapid —
yea, shoot it blindfolded, playing a mandolin
with one hand and writing my autograph with
the other. Fred, too, was enthusiastic about
it. As a matter of fact, Fred is always per-
fectly willing to take a hundred-to-one shot
and play it either way. Fred's life is a hot-
footed pursuit of new sensations. I am ready
to bet a lace-doily against the last cigarette
in camp that the first man that bumps his
monoplane into an asteroid is Fred. Any
expedition that holds out the slightest chance
[204]
Curiosity Trail
of adventure is no place for a man who owes
a duty to his family — if Fred is along. But
Jim and His Lordship would n't hear of it —
our shooting Frenchman's Rapid, I mean.
They didn't want their trip marred by a
fatality — even a fool's fatality — and that
argument was too honest to be answera-
ble so we hit the trail, while the Indians
portaged.
It was a beautiful trail, candid and well-
behaved. In fact it was so good that when
Fred and I struck an intersecting trail that
looked fresh, we were simultaneously seized
with a desire to leave the portage-trail and
see where the new trail led to. It looked as
if it might lead to a lake. The contour of
the country indicated it. We knew it would
take an hour for the Indians to get the things
over the portage, so we struck off on that
siren trail.
It did lead to a lake, a beautiful, placid,
brooding little lake, and, to our surprise, we
saw an Indian tepee on the far side of it.
[205]
The Trout of Cat Portage
We walked around the lake — still on the
trail — and found an Indian patching a birch-
bark canoe, in front of the tepee. I recog-
nized him as Jim Radigeau, or something
like that. Anyway, it was Jim. The last
time — and only time — I had seen Jim was
five years ago up on St. Ignace Island, in
Nepigon Bay. Then we found a pulp-wood
camp just as we had decided to sleep under
a spruce all night, and the next day Jim
took us first to a trout-stream and then to
our camp.
Jim said he had his "woman" and kids
in the tepee. Fred and I went in to call and
take some pictures. There were a squaw
and four half or three quarter naked young-
sters in that tepee. Nobody seemed to be
enjoying the call. We stayed just long
enough in that tepee to exchange a few half-
Chippewa commonplaces and observe that
all the members of Jim's family looked droopy
and languid. I tried to draw one little
papoose into conversation, but there was
[206]
Solicitude and —
nothing doing. When we came out I said,
"Jim, — the wife and the kids don't seem to
be well."
Jim said " Naw" and went right on putting
pitch on the canoe-seams.
"Been sick long?" asked Fred sympa-
thetically.
"Two, free day — mebbe week or two,"
said Jim.
"What 's the matter with them — do you
know, Jim?" I asked.
"Not much — just leetle seek, I guess —
smallpox — man at Post he say."
In that dash through the brush Fred, I
recall vaguely, fell three times. We took
four or five baths, brushed our teeth, and
rubbed ourselves thoroughly with all of His
Lordship's moust ache-in vigor at or. In fact,
we took all the precautions that the limited
medical-kit permitted and then promised
each other to say nothing to Jim or His
Lordship, for fear of alarming them need-
lessly, until the worst should manifest itself.
[207]
The Trout of Cat Portage
It was another eloquent lesson to "stick to
the trail."
I should like very much to write five or
six books about that stretch of the Michipo-
coten River between Frenchman's Rapid
and Cat Portage. That is n't more than
two miles. We should have been delighted
to have found it a hundred. It is there a
typical trout-stream, magnified about ten-
fold. The current is swift — here and there
riffles — and always on one bank or the other
there is a deep, dark hole. We were casting
into those holes constantly — that is, as
many of them as we could reach before we
whizzed by in the canoes. A man would
get a rise and never have the chance to give
that chagrined trout an encore, if he missed,
and it took a trout with a big appetite and a
good eye to hit those flies as they raced past.
It was a crime to fish that magnificent water
in that Cook-tourist fashion and, more shame
to us, we knew it.
Once, I remember, I cast in beneath the
[208]
In Amber Shadows
overhanging bank, to deep, dark, amber
water in the shadows. My flies hit a
log — I thought I had lost the leader —
and then toppled off into the water. A
great trout struck, just as the fleeing ca-
noe tightened the line. And I struck back.
He was too good a fish to tow astern like
a saw-log. He deserved better things. I
insisted upon a landing on a sand beach.
George swung in and we pulled that gor-
geous little savage out on the snow-white
sands. We took a half-dozen, casting from
that beach over into the deep water across
the river.
There was one thing we did perfect, though,
during that river trip. That was the theory
and technique of "inside baseball." When
you wanted anything which you knew some
other canoe contained, all you had to do
was to yell for it — and catch it. We grew
so expert that we could pick tobacco-pouches,
cigarettes, tin cups, matches, map-cases, fly-
books, and other sybaritic articles, capable of
14 [209]
The Trout of Cat Portage
a fair trajectory, out of the clear northern
atmosphere with an accuracy that brought
applause from George and appreciative giggles
from William T. himself.
We did n't run the rapids at Cat Portage,
either. I was n't conscious of the vaguest
impulse to run those rapids after we had
had a look at them. There is a drop there
of thirty-three feet within a half-mile and
the water bellows down a set of terraces, in
one place taking a straight fall of ten feet.
It was about two o'clock when we reached
the upper end of Cat Portage, and after
carrying to the lower end, we did precisely
what we should not have done and might
have been expected to do — namely, fish at
the wrong end of the rapids. It was ideal
trout-water, save for the inexplicable absence
of trout. We did n't get a rise down there
at the base of the falls. His Lordship said
he didn't know much about the habits of
trout, but if that were a good specimen of
the taste and judgment of a trout of average
[210]
Inspirations and Results
intelligence, he did n't care to know any
more.
Fred and I sat down on a roll of blankets
and discussed this palpable nature-fake on
the trout's part. Suddenly Fred slapped
his thigh and said:
"I've got it!"
Eagerly I inquired for the clue.
"It is very simple," he chuckled. "The
reason the trout are n't rising down here is
because we 're fishing where there are n't any
trout."
"Wonderful ! " I applauded warmly. " Your
idea, then, is to take a trout-census of these
rapids, learn where the trout-population is
most congested, and fish there. Fine! Where
do you suggest we begin?"
"Up the rapids, of course," said Fred,
ignoring my futile irony. "We've made
that mistake every time we 've struck any
rapids. The trout are in the rapids, neither
above nor below. Come on!"
Fred and I hit the back trail. The place
[211]
The Trout of Cat Portage
which we selected to leave the trail and work
down to the rapids was excellently chosen.
Evidently a tornado had also chosen that
place to make a landing recently. Big cedars
and pines were scattered about and piled
upon one another in beautiful confusion.
It was very diverting to walk along, over
and under this heap of jack-straws, meanwhile
carrying a trout-rod with three flies dangling
and all looking for trouble.
I knew we must be getting pretty close
to the rapids — the roar told us that. Fred
parted the bushes at last and began capering
on his log. I joined him. There was some
justification for capering. At our feet, maybe
ten feet below, was a deep, shadowy pool with
a little private waterfall of its own. It was a
sort of quiet side-street to the main thorough-
fare of traffic out there beyond. The trees
canopied it. Fred clung with one arm to
a tree-trunk and dropped his three flies
into those mysterious waters. That is, he
would have done that, if the trout hadn't
[212]
Capering Condoned
jumped and grabbed his flies before they
reached the water.
"Oh, my boy!" said Fred, with repressed
emotion. "This is simply a shame! Here
I shall settle down to a contented and tran-
quil old age."
But we did not settle down. That 's the
restless ambition of a trout-fisherman — when
he hooks his first pound-trout, he 's sure life
holds no other work for him. After his
third pound-trout, he begins to wonder if
there is n't a pound-and-a-half trout in the
next pool. His first two-pounder sires the
ambition to make it four pounds. Finally
ambition — or greed — had driven us right
out into the middle of the rapids with such
a din all about us that we had to scream
into each other's ears. There was a sort
of granite backbone through the centre of
that mad water and we fished from that,
casting sometimes over into the torrent on
the far side and letting the flies run down
with the welter, and sometimes dropping
[213]
The Trout of Cat Portage
the flies over the brink of a precipice into
the foam at the base of the falls. Sometimes
you could see a lithe, orange little form
shoot up above the white-caps for an instant
as he rushed at your fly. But that was n't
often. Generally, the first warning, an elec-
trifying thrill, came along your line and your
protesting rod would suddenly bend double.
Jim joined us — to see why we were delaying
the expedition's departure down the river.
He came to chasten and hurry us. Jim
took one cast — it was to be "just one quick
one"; then Jim was lost completely to the
call of duty and the flight of time. No
fish we got in those two delirious hours went
above two pounds. But in the swift, cold
water that gave them all the rugged strength
and ferocity of the wilderness and made every
ounce of resistance tell, each trout was really
as good as a three-pounder. Most of them
we killed on Montreal-flies, although my
largest took a "Willie H."— a local fly. We
lost, probably, twice as many as we landed.
[214]
To Love and Duty Lost
In that torrent, they often succeeded in
tearing the hook from their mouths in the
first furious rush.
His Lordship followed Jim. He came up
to tell us — what Jim, some hours before, had
come to tell us — that our thoughtless delay
was delaying the departure of the expedition
— and we had to find a camping-site. His
Lordship was just as indignant and logical
and entirely right in his contention as Jim
had been. We pressed a rod into His Lord-
ship's hands. Two hours later we had to
lay violent hands upon His Lordship to
arouse him to his duty-sense, because, this
time, George had come to look for us, and
it was really getting dark.
My final departure from the college-campus
— one June night a considerable number of
years ago now — was no more reluctant than
my departure from that wild, trout-sur-
rounded rock, the focus of the Cat Portage
Rapids. We talk of it now in whispers when
we meet. And I — I brazenly declare it — I
[215]
The Trout of Cat Portage
dream of it, particularly when the Big
City has been grinding me with unusual
brutality and my brain and body pray mem-
ory to bring just a little relief.
For three miles, then, in the twilight
we ran rapids, innocent, playful little rapids
for the most way — but continuous rapids.
It rained, too. But as we had sent Pete
and Tommie on ahead with one canoe to put
up the tents and start dinner-preparations,
we paddled right into luxury. Shelter and
dry clothes and a roaring fire were ready for
us — in a grove of huge cedars that stood on
the crest of a high bank.
I observed that when we broached the topic,
ever congenial, of the dinner bill-of-fare, both
Tommie and George were elaborately secre-
tive. Both of them were fairly swathed in
some huge and portentous mystery. Knowing
the Indian mind a little — a mind that is child-
like in its simplicity and gentleness — I
dropped the subject and left dinner to them
as they, very evidently, longed to have me do.
[216]
Coup Culinary
When we scampered under the dining-fly,,
the pyrotechnic set-piece was touched off.
There were two ducks! George had killed
them — while we were fishing Cat Portage —
and killed them with Fred's little twenty-
two-calibre rifle, too. How Tommie had
contrived to roast them in an hour, we shall
never know. But they were good, almost
as good as the expressions of beatific delight
on those gentle red men's faces as they
watched us fall upon the birds.
The mosquitoes came down from the
swamps in large family-parties that night
and dallied with us till sunrise. But it was
the first time and only time on the trip
and — let this be inscribed in letters large
and luminous — not a dozen black-flies did we
see on the Michipocoten River.
Two red squirrels, playing follow-the-
leader or hare-and-hounds along the ridge-
pole of my tent and using absolutely the
most profane language I have ever listened
to in the woods, awakened me. His Lord-
[217]
The Trout of Cat Portage
ship was on his knees in front of the tent
trying to start a fire, while Jim, from an
eminently safe and warm vantage-point,
between his Hudson Bay blankets, was
telling His Lordship minutely how to do it.
To His Lordship's outspoken relief, Fred
and I fell upon James and the argumentative
uproar reminded George that he had n't
awakened us — which he forthwith came to
do.
The rain-storm had blown on, up toward
the Arctic Circle, and the wilderness was all
fresh and glittering when we pushed the
canoes out into the stream — for the last
day on the Michipocoten. Almost imme-
diately we glided down upon wonderful
trout-water, semi-rapids and deep pools
beneath the slack-water that eddied about
great stumps and rocks. Also, almost im-
mediately, we began getting big rises and
hooking big fish. We began making pools —
gambling, not trout-pools — of a dollar a
corner. Every time a man netted a fish,
[218]
Shadow of the Cauldron
Jim, in the rearmost canoe, would make an
entry in the Log and re-adjust the "batting
averages."
Near the mouth of the An-jo-go-mi-ni
River — which is merely an indolent creek, by
the way — George and I, in the first canoe,
suddenly shot around a bend and found our-
selves in a great granite basin. The en-
trance was scarcely ten yards across. The
basin was, perhaps, fifty yards in diameter
and at the outlet it narrowed up again as
it was at the entrance. The walls of rock
arose straight out of the water and towered
up fifty to a hundred feet high. In there the
water boiled and circled about upon itself
like a cauldron. Here and there a great
boulder showed its head intermittently, as
the torrent raced over it and subsided for
the moment. It was, indeed, a giant's
chamber.
The instant the bow of the canoe cleared
the entrance and I cast over near the rocks,
a tremendous fish struck the drop-fly and I
[219]
The Trout at Cat Portage
set the hook in him solidly and felt the thrill
of the living weight on the line. He made
just one rush, straight for the canoe, and went
under it, before George, ever alert, could
sweep the bow around. I could no more
snub that fury than I could have snubbed
a street-car, hooked to a four-ounce rod.
And the inevitable and most lamentable
happened: the second joint of my rod
snapped with a sharp report. Then, murder
flared up in my heart. For about five years
life had held nothing dearer to my heart
than that rod — that is, nothing very much
dearer. It had accompanied me along the
whole coast-line of Lake Superior and it
had never faltered or complained or sulked.
Just before I left the Big City for this trip,
the sporting-goods man who had re-wound
and shellacked that dear little rod had offered
me half of his store and one of the children
for it — and I had laughed with a light heart
at him. So George and I fought that trout-
beast with clenched teeth. When George
[220]
Vengeance
finally netted him on a rock we shook our
fists in his face and cursed him.
However, His Lordship, Fred, and Jim,
successively, darting through that opening
into the maelstrom and heeding my shouts
to swing over into the slack-water, so as to
cover that great pool, speedily began mani-
festing symptoms of profound agitation. At
one time the three canoes were hooked-up
to three big trout simultaneously and the
evolutions, quite extemporaneous, of that
flotilla reminded George and me of a water
carnival more than anything else. However,
there was nothing festal in the least suggested
by the language which they used when they
got their lines intermingled and chased their
trout underneath one another's canoes.
George wrenched us away from that granite
chamber. At Storm Hill we ran some rather
ugly rapids and at noon George announced
us abreast of the Firesand River. We had
heard really a tremendous lot about the
Firesand. On the steamer coming up the
[221]
The Trout at Cat Portage
shore a miner told us that he had camped for
two weeks once on the Firesand and the
trout were so plentiful and savage and pes-
tiferous that, as I recall now, he had to set
wolf-traps for them to keep them out of
the grub. Naturally, we had talked a great
deal and looked forward with liveliest an-
ticipation to the Firesand River. For a
time I could n't see the Firesand at all, even
after George had pointed it out and assured
me that it was n't fifty yards away. True,
it was a pretty and compact river, just the
kind that a householder would like to have
to fill his bath-tub o' mornings when the
pressure at the city water works is lethargic
and slow. There might have been a trout
in it — if the trout did n't mind close quarters,
but there certainly was n't room for two. We
were so disappointed that we went to the
beach for lunch and something from His Lord-
ship's flask. One of us was forced to "take it
straight, " too. There was n't enough water
in the Firesand River for four "chasers."
[222]
A Varied Program
It took us all the afternoon to get through
and around the falls of the Michipocoten.
Those are the real falls of the whole great
river. In three miles the river drops one
hundred and eighty-four feet. The rational
thing to do there is to load the canoes on a
wagon — there is a power-plant there — and
portage around in comfort and dignity and
dryness. However, we were looking for
incident and color and disinclined toward
rationalism. We got the incident and color,
too. For just four hours we were at it.
We ran some nasty water. We portaged
around sheer precipices. We cut through
dense underbrush with our axes to lug the
canoes. We carried the canoes over shallows.
We spilled out and got in again. We were
in the water to our necks. Fred himself
performed a submarine feat once, when the
paddle, upon which he was putting his
weight, slipped off a submerged rock. The
last two hundred yards of those rapids we
tobogganed down an oily slide in which
[223]
The Trout at Cat Portage
the sprinter's path was marked off by jagged
rocks, sometimes not more than five feet
apart.
By that time it was six-thirty, growing
cold and dark, and we were very wet. George
had lost his hat and Jim his pipe. Jim
was n't sure that he had lost his pipe. He
said he thought maybe he had swallowed it
during one of those tense moments when
his canoe had the alternative of hurdling
a boulder or going through it. There was a
good place to camp right there. And yet
the idea of dashing along, not stopping until
we reached the old Hudson's Bay post
whence we had started, and completing the
whole Michipocoten River trip that night
with a flourish was admittedly attractive.
I quizzed George as to the distance down
the river to its mouth.
"Oh, mebbe, t'ree, four mile — yes, sure,
I guess, mebbe — five mile, sure, 'bout dat."
We baled out, wrung out, lighted up — and
started. The sun disappeared. Then came
[224]
In the Stretch
the brilliant afterglow of the northern heavens.
Every man paddled and paddled hard, be-
cause every man was cold and there was
no other way for any man to keep warm.
We raced down the river. Each turn we
expected to be the opening of the last mile
stretch, and George would say:
"Oh, mebbe, two, free mile more — sure,
'boutdat."
The waters of the river turned to silver,
then gold, then purple. We passed beau-
tiful trout-water, but we had no time to fish.
We turned a bend of the river. The canoes
were going silently, every man intent upon
his stroke. There was a sound of rolling
pebbles. There was a sand-bank, probably
thirty feet high. A red deer had been drink-
ing at the foot of it. When he heard us, or
saw us, he had no choice but to scramble up
that bank to safety. And how that deer did
scramble! He was a big six-point buck and
it took him three minutes to climb that sliding
sand and burst into the thicket with a snort,
is [225]
The Trout at Cat Portage
And still we paddled. We were going,
probably, seven miles an hour with that
slashing current and had been at it for an
hour, then an hour and a half, then two hours
— and still no Mission and familiar white
buildings of the post. George pointed out
a place where, thirty years ago, the Hudson's
Bay Company had deliberately and wisely
changed the bed of the river, moved it over
bodily about a half-mile. Once the river
described almost a closed loop there and the
voyageurs did n't care for the mile portage,
besides. It *s a serious-minded, precocious
little corporation, that Hudson's Bay Com-
pany.
My back muscles were fairly squeaking
and I could feel blisters thriving luxuriously
on my poor protesting knee-caps, when I
heard a dog howl. Then several dogs and
a whole half-wolf pack howled. The spire
of the Mission came into the brilliant sky
and we smelled wood-smoke in the twilight
and heard a man shout to us from the shore.
[226]
And so — at Last —
With no announcement, we glided out of
the last turn upon the broad stretch of the
river and there lay the deserted buildings
of the post, on our left, their whitewashed
clapboards and little window-panes shimmer-
ing in the white moonlight. We felt dis-
tinctly romantic and historical — particularly
His Lordship. We could fairly fancy our-
selves wraiths of those old voyageurs, spirits
of those rare-old, fair-old days, who in their
vigorous human shapes had come down
through just the wild rapids and gorges
and trails that we had passed — straight down
through the great wilderness from James
Bay — and now saw their journey's end in
the lights of the post, where hospitality and
money and gaudy red sashes and wine and
song awaited them. Had we known a
chanson — as only dear dead Henry Drum-
mond knew them — we should have sung one
as we swung up to the old landing place.
But we didn't. The lights were out. We
scarcely spoke to one another as each stepped
[227]
The Trout at Cat Portage
stiffly from the canoe. It really was not a
nice sound to hear the grating of the canoe-
keels on the beach. To be sure, it meant
camp, a fire, dry clothes, a drink, and dinner.
But it meant, also, the end of a tremendous
chapter in our lives — a chapter never old
and always green. And such a realization
is always bad, the only really bad thing
in the philosophy of the wilderness and the
calendar of Vacation Days.
THE END.
[228]
14 DAY USE
RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED
LOAN DEPT.
This book is due on the last date stamped below, or
on the date to which renewed.
Renewed books are subject to immediate recall.
\BDec59RHt
: 1^1959
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LD 21A-50m-4,'59
(A1724slO)476B
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